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THE BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 




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THE BOLSHEVIKI 

AND 
WORLD PEACE 



BY LEON TROTZKY 

INTRODUCTION BY LINCOLN STEFFEN8 



BONI AND LIVERIGHT 

NEW YORK 1918 



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Copyright 
1918 

BONI & LlVEHIGHT, INC. 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Introduction by Lincoln Steffens .... 7 
Author's Preface 20 



CHAPTER 



I. The Balkan Question 39 

II. Austria-Hungary 62 

III. The War against Czarism 78 

IV. The War against the West . . . .101 

V. The War of Defense 118 

VI. What Have Socialists to do with Capi- 
talist W t ars? 144 

VII. The Collapse of the International. . 172 

VIII. Socialist Opportunism 183 

IX. The Decline of the Revolutionary 

Spirit 203 

X. Working Class Imperialism . . . .211 

XI. The Revolutionary Epoch 221 



INTRODUCTION 

The voice that speaks in this book is the 
voice of Leon Trotzky, the Bolshevik Minister 
of Foreign Affairs for Revolutionary Russia. 
It is expressing ideas and views which lighted 
him on the course of his policy toward the War, 
Peace and the Revolution. It throws light, 
therefore, on that policy; it helps to an under- 
standing of it, if one wishes to understand. But 
that isn't all. The spirit that flames and casts 
shadows upon these pages is not only Trotzky's. 
It is the spirit also of the Bolsheviki; of the red 
left of the left wing of the revolutionary move- 
ment of New Russia. It flashed from Petro- 
grad to Vladivostok, in the first week of the 
revolt; it burned all along the Russian Front 
before Trotzky appeared on the scene. It will 
smoulder long after he is gone. It is a hot Fact 

7 



8 INTBODUCTION 

which has to be picked up and examined, this 
spirit. Whether we like it or don't, it is there ; 
in Russia; it is elsewhere; it is everywhere to- 
day. It is the spirit of war ; class war, but war. 
It is in this book. 
Nor is that all. 

The mind in this book — the point of view from 
which it starts, the views to which it points — 
Trotzky's mind is the international mind. We 
have heard before of this new intelligence; we 
have read books, heard speeches, witnessed acts 
demonstrative of thoughts and feelings which 
are not national, but international; not patri- 
otic, but loyal only to the lower-class-conscious 
war aims of the workers of the world. The 
class warrior is as familiar a figure to us as the 
red spirit is of the red left of revolution. But 
the voice which utters here the spirit and the 
mind, not only of the Russian, but of the world 
revolution is the voice of one having authority. 
And Trotzky, in power, has been as red as he 



INTEODUCTION 9 

is in this book. The minister of foreign affairs 
practised in Petrograd what he preached in 
Switzerland, where he wrote most of the chap^ 
ters of his book. And he practised also what 
all the other great International Socialist lead- 
ers talked and wrote. 

That's what makes him so hard to under- 
stand, him and his party and the Bolshevik 
policy. We are accustomed to the sight of So- 
cialists and Radicals going into office and being 
"sobered by the responsibilities of power." 
French and Italian Socialists in the Liberal 
ministries of their countries; British Labor 
leaders in Parliament in England or in the 
governments of their Colonies; and the whole 
Socialist party in Germany and Austria (ex- 
cept Liebknecht in prison) — all are examples 
of the effect of power upon the International 
Mind. The phenomenon of compromise and 
surrender is so common that many radicals op- 
pose the taking of any responsible office by any 



10 INTRODUCTION 

member of their parties; and some of the ex- 
tremists are advocating no political action 
whatsoever, nothing but industrial, economic or 
what they call "direct action." (Our LW.W.'s 
don't vote, on principle.) This is anarchism. 

Leon Trotzky is not an anarchist ; except in 
the ignorant sense of the word as used by edu- 
cated people. He is a Socialist; an orthodox 
Marxian Socialist. But he has seen vividly the 
danger of political power. The body of this 
book was addressed originally to the German 
and Austrian Socialists, and it is a reasoned, 
but indignant reproach of them for letting their 
political position and their nationalistic loyalty 
carry them away into an undemocratic, patri- 
otic, political policy which betrayed the weaker 
nations in their empires, helped break up the 
Second (Socialist) International and led the 
Socialist parties into the support of the War. 

Clear upon it, Trotzky himself does not il- 
lustrate his own thesis. He not only detests in- 



INTEODUCTION 11 

tellectually the secrecy and the sordid wicked- 
ness of the "old diplomacy" ; when he came as 
minister into possession of the archives of the 
Russian Foreign Office, he published the secret 
treaties, 

That hurt. And so with the idea of a peo- 
ple's peace. All the democratic world had been 
talking ever since the war began of a peace 
made, not by diplomats in a private room, but 
by the chosen representatives of all the peo- 
ples meeting in an open congress. The Bolshe- 
viki worked for that from the moment the Rus- 
sian Revolution broke; and they labored for 
the Stockholm Conference while Paul Milyou- 
kov and Alexander Kerensky were negotiat- 
ing with the allied governments. When the 
Bolsheviki succeeded to power, Lenine and 
Trotzky formally authorized and officially pro- 
posed such a congress. Moreover Trotzky 
showed that they were willing, if they could, 



12 INTRODUCTION 

to force the other countries to accept the peo- 
ple's peace conference. 

This hurt. This hurt so much that the gov- 
ernments united in extraordinary measures to 
prevent the event. And when they succeeded, 
and it was seen that no people's peace could be 
made openly and directly, Trotzky proceeded 
by another way to get to the same end. He 
opened negotiations with the Kaiser's govern- 
ment and allies; arranged an armistice and 
agreed tentatively upon terms of peace. 

This act not only hurt ; it stunned the world, 
and no wonder! It was like a declaration of 
war against a whole world at war. It was un- 
believable. The only explanation offered was 
that Trotzky and Lenine were pro-German or 
dishonest, or both, and these things were said 
in high places ; and they were said with convic- 
tion, too. Moreover this conviction colored, if 
it did not determine, the attitude the Allies took 
toward New Russia and the peace proposals 



INTEODUCTION 13 

Trotzky got from the German government. 
Was this assumption of the dishonesty of Trot- 
zky the only explanation of his act? 

This book shows, as I have said, that Trotzky 
saw things from the revolutionary, interna- 
tional point of view, which is not that of his 
judges ; which is incomprehensible to them. He 
wrote it after the War began; he finished the 
main part of it before the Russian Revolution. 
It is his view of the War, its causes and its ef- 
fects, especially upon international Socialism 
and "the" Revolution. These are the things he 
holds in his mind all through all these pages: 
"the" Revolution and world democracy. Also 
I have shown that, like the Russians generally, 
his mind is literal. The Russians mean what 
they say, exactly ; and Trotzky not only means, 
he does what he writes. Putting these con- 
siderations together, we can make a compre- 
hensible statement of the motive and the pur- 
pose of his policy; if we want to comprehend. 



14 INTRODUCTION 

To all the other secretaries of state or of 
foreign affairs in the world, the Russian Revo- 
lution was an incident, an interruption of the 
War. To Minister Trotzky it was the other 
way around. 

The World War was an incident, an effect, 
a check of "the" Revolution. Not the Russian 
Revolution, you understand. To Trotzky the 
Russian Revolution is but one, the first of that 
series of national revolutions which together 
will become the Thing he yearns for and proph- 
esies : the World Revolution. 

His peace policy therefore is a peace drive 
directed, not at a separate peace with the Cen- 
tral Powers; and not even at a general peace, 
but to an ending of the War in and by "the" 
Revolution everywhere. 

Especially in Germany and Austria. He 
said this. The correspondent of the London 
Daily News cabled on January 2, right after 
the armistice and the agreement upon peace 



INTRODUCTION 15 

terms to be offered the Allies, that "Trotzky 
is doing his utmost to stimulate a revolution 
in Germany. . . . Our only chance to defeat 
German designs is to publish terms (from the 
Allies) . . . to help the democratic movement 
in Germany." 

Trotzky is not pro-German. He certainly 
was not when he wrote this book. He hates 
here both the Austrian and the German dynas- 
ties, and his ill-will toward the House of Haps- 
burg is so bitter that it sounds sometimes as if 
there were something personal about it. And 
there is. He shows a knowledge of and a living 
sympathy with the small and subject nations 
which Austria rules, exploits and mistreats. He 
blames his Austrian comrades for their alle- 
giance to a throne which is not merely undemo- 
cratic, but "senile" and tyrannical. That he, 
the literal Trotzky, would turn right around 
and, as the Russian Minister of Foreign Af- 



16 INTEODUCTION 

fairs, do what he had so recently criticized the 
Austrian Socialists for doing is unlikely. 

Trotzky is against all the present govern- 
ments of Europe, and the "bourgeois system" 
everywhere in the world. He isn't pro- Allies ; 
he isn't even pro-Russian. He isn't a patriot 
at all. He is for a class, the proletariat, the 
working people of all countries, and he is for 
his class only to get rid of classes and get down 
or up to — humanity. And so with his people. 

The Russians have listened to the Socialist 
propaganda for generations now. They have 
learned the chief lessons it has taught : liberty, 
land, industrial democracy and the class-war 
the world over. This War was not their war; 
it was the Czar's war ; a war of the governments 
in the interest of their enemies, the capitalists 
of their several countries, who, as Trotzky says, 
were forcing their states to fight for the right 
to exploit other and smaller peoples. So when 
they overthrew the Czar, the Russians wanted 



INTKODUCTION 17 

to drop his war and go into their own, the class 
war. Kerensky held them at the front in the 
name of "the" Revolution; he would get peace 
for them by arrangement with the allies. He 
didn't ; he couldn't ; he was dismissed by them. 
Not by the Bolsheviki, but by the Russian peo- 
ple who know the three or four things they 
want : land and liberty at home ; the Revolution 
and Democracy for all the world. 

I heard a radical assert one day that that 
was the reason Trotzky could be such an ex- 
ception to the rule about radicals in power. 
He came to the head of the Russian Revolu- 
tion when his ideas were the actual demands of 
the Russian people and that it was not his 
strength of character, but the force of a demo- 
cratic public opinion in mob power, which made 
him stick to his philosophy and carry out his 
theories and promises. I find upon inquiry 
here in New York that while he was living and 
working as a journalist on the East Side, he 



18 INTBODUCTION 

left one paper after another because he could 
not conform to their editorial policies and 
would not compromise. He was "stiff-necked," 
"obstinate," "unreasonable." In other, kinder 
words, Trotzky is a strong man, with a definite 
mind and a purpose of his own, which he has 
the will and the nerve to pursue. 

Also, however, Trotzky is a strong man who 
is ruled by and represents a very simple-minded 
people who are acting like him, literally upon 
the theory that the people govern now, in Rus- 
sia; the common people; and that, since they 
don't like the War of the Czar, the Kaiser, the 
Kings and the Emperors, their government 
should make peace with the peoples of the 
world, a democratic peace against imperialism 
and capitalism and the state everywhere, for 
the establishment in its stead of a free, world- 
wide democracy. 

That may be the true explanation of Trot- 
zky's Bolshevik peace policy in the world crisis 



INTEODUCTION 19 

of the World War. That is the explanation 
which is suggested by this book. 

"Written in extreme haste," he says at the 
close of his preface, "under conditions far 
from favorable to systematic work . . . the en- 
tire book, from the first page to the last, was 
written with the idea of the New International 
constantly in mind — the New International 
which must rise out of the present world cata- 
clysm, the International of the last conflict and 
the final victory." 

Lincoln Stefeens. 

New York, January 4th, 1917. 



AUTHORS PREFACE 

The forces of production which capitalism 
has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation 
and state. The national state, the present po- 
litical form, is too narrow for the exploita- 
tion of these productive forces. The natural 
tendency of our economic system, therefore, 
is to seek to break through the state bounda- 
ries. The whole globe, the land and the sea, the 
surface as well as the interior, has become one 
economic workshop, the different parts of 
which are inseparably connected with each 
other. This work was accomplished by cap- 
italism. But in accomplishing it the capitalist 
states were led to struggle for the subjection 
of the world-embracing economic system to the 
profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each coun- 
try. What the politics of imperialism has 

20 



ATJTHOB 'S PBEF ACE 21 

demonstrated more than anything else is that 
the old national state that was created in the 
revolutions and the wars of 1789-1815, 1848- 
1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, 
and is now an intolerable hindrance to eco- 
nomic development. 

The present War is at bottom a revolt of the 
forces of production against the political form 
of nation and state. It means the collapse of 
the national state as an independent economic 
unit. 

The nation must continue to exist as a cul- 
tural, ideologic and psychological fact, but its 
economic foundation has been pulled from un- 
der its feet. All talk of the present bloody 
clash being a work of national defense is either 
hypocrisy or blindness. On the contrary, the 
real, objective significance of the war is the 
breakdown of the present national economic 
centres, and the substitution of a world econ- 
omy in its stead. But the way the govern- 



22 AUTHOK'S PREFACE 

ments propose to solve this problem of impe- 
rialism is not through the intelligent, organized 
cooperation of all of humanity's producers, but 
through the exploitation of the world's eco- 
nomic system by the capitalist class of the vic- 
torious country; which country is by this War 
to be transformed from a great power into the 
world power. 

The War proclaims the downfall of the na- 
tional state. Yet at the same time it proclaims 
the downfall of the capitalist system of econ- 
omy. By means of the national state capital- 
ism has revolutionized the whole economic 
system of the world. It has divided the whole 
earth among the oligarchies of the great pow- 
ers, around which were grouped the satellites, 
the small nations, who lived off the rivalry be- 
tween the great ones. The future develop- 
ment of world economy on the capitalistic 
basis means a ceaseless struggle for new and 
ever new fields of capitalist exploitation, which 



AUTHOE'S PREFACE 23 

must be obtained from one and the same source, 
the earth. The economic rivalry under the ban- 
ner of militarism is accompanied by robbery 
and destruction which violate the elementary 
principles of human economy. World produc- 
tion revolts not only against the confusion pro- 
duced by national and state divisions but also 
against the capitalist economic organization, 
which has now turned into barbarous disorgani- 
zation and chaos. 

The War of 1914 is the most colossal break- 
down in history of an economic system de- 
stroyed by its own inherent contradictions. 

All the historical forces whose task it has 
been to guide the bourgeois society, to speak in 
its name and to exploit it, have declared their 
historical bankruptcy by the War. They de- 
fended capitalism as a system of human civ- 
ilization, and the catastrophe born out of that 
system is primarily their catastrophe. The first 
wave of events raised the national governments 



24 AUTHOB'S PEEFACE 

and armies to unprecedented heights never at- 
tained before. For the moment the nations 
rallied around them. But the more terrible will 
be the crash of the governments when the peo- 
ple, deafened by the thunder of the cannon, 
realize the meaning of the events now taking 
place in all their truth and frightfulness. 

The revolutionary reaction of the masses will 
be all the more powerful the more prodigious 
the cataclysm which history is now bringing 
upon them. 

Capitalism has created the material condi- 
tions of a new Socialist economic system. Im- 
perialism has led the capitalist nations into his- 
toric chaos. The War of 1914 shows the way 
out of this chaos by violently urging the pro- 
letariat on to the path of Revolution. 

For the economic backward countries of 
Europe the War brings to the fore problems of 
a far earlier historic origin — problems of 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 25 

democracy and national unity. This is in a 
large measure the case with the peoples of Rus- 
sia, Austria-Hungary and the Balkan Penin- 
sula. But these historically belated questions, 
which were bequeathed to the present epoch as 
a heritage from the past, do not alter the fun- 
damental character of the events. It is not the 
national aspirations of the Serbs, Poles, Rou- 
manians or Finns that has mobilized twenty- 
five million soldiers and placed them in the bat- 
tlefields, but the imperialistic interests of the 
bourgeoisie of the Great Powers. It is imperi- 
alism that has upset completely the European 
status quo_, maintained for forty-five years, and 
raised again the old questions which the bour- 
geois revolution proved itself powerless to 
solve. 

Yet in the present epoch it is quite impos- 
sible to treat these questions in and by them- 
selves. They are utterly devoid of an inde- 
pendent character. The creation of normal re- 



26 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

lations of national life and economic develop- 
ment on the Balkan Peninsula is unthinkable 
if Czarism and Austria-Hungary are pre- 
served. Czarism is now the indispensable mili- 
tary reservoir for the financial imperialism of 
France and the conservative colonial power of 
England. Austria-Hungary is the mainstay 
of Germany's imperialism. Issuing from the 
private family clashes between the national 
Servian terrorists and the Hapsburg political 
police, the War very quickly revealed its true 
fundamental character — a struggle of life and 
death between Germany and England. While 
the simpletons and hypocrites prate of the de- 
fense of national freedom and independence, 
the German-English War is really being waged 
for the freedom of the imperialistic exploitation 
of the peoples of India and Egypt on the one 
hand, and for the imperialistic division of the 
peoples of the earth on the other. 

Germany began its capitalistic development 



AUTHOE'S PEEFACE 27 

on a national basis with the destruction of the 
continental hegemony of France in the year 
1870-1871. Now that the development of Ger- 
man industry on a national foundation has 
transformed Germany into the first capitalistic 
power of the world, she finds herself colliding 
with the hegemony of England in her further 
course of development. The complete and un- 
limited domination of the European continent 
seems to Germany the indispensable prerequi- 
site of the overthrow of her world enemy. The 
first thing, therefore, that imperialistic Ger- 
many writes in her programme is the creation 
of a Middle European League of Nations. 
Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan Pe- 
ninsula and Turkey, Holland, the Scandina- 
vian countries, Switzerland, Italy, and, if pos- 
sible, enfeebled France and Spain and Portu- 
gal, are to make one economic and military 
whole, a Great Germany under the hegemony 
of the present German state. 



28 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

This programme, which has been thoroughly 
elaborated by the economists, political students, 
jurists and diplomats of German imperialism 
and translated into reality by its strategists, is 
the most striking proof and most eloquent ex- 
pression of the fact that capitalism has ex- 
panded beyond the limits of the national state 
and feels intolerably cramped within its bound- 
aries. The national Great Power must go and 
in its place must step the imperialistic World 
Power. 

In these historical circumstances the working 
class, the proletariat, can have no interest in 
defending the outlived and antiquated national 
"fatherland," which has become the main ob- 
stacle to economic development. The task of 
the proletariat is to create a far more powerful 
fatherland, with far greater power of resis- 
tance^ — the republican United States of 
Europe j as the foundation of the United States 
of the World. 



AUTHOK'S PEEFACE 29 

The only way in which the proletariat can 
meet the imperialistic perplexity of capitalism 
is by opposing to it as a practical programme 
of the day the Socialist organization of world 
economy. 

War is the method by which capitalism, at 
the climax of its development, seeks to solve 
its insoluble contradictions. To this method 
the proletariat must oppose its own method, 
the method of the Social Revolution. 

The Balkan question and the question of the 
overthrow of Czarism, propounded to us by the 
Europe of yesterday, can be solved only in a 
revolutionary way, in connection with the prob- 
lem of the United Europe of to-morrow. The 
immediate, urgent task of the Russian Social 
Democracy, to which the author belongs, is the 
fight against Czarism. What Czarism prima- 
rily seeks in Austria-Hungary and the Balkans 
is a market for its political methods of plunder, 



30 AUTHOB'S PEEFACE 

robbery and acts of violence. The Russian 
bourgeoisie all the way up to its radical intel- 
lectuals has become completely demoralized by 
the tremendous growth of industry in the last 
five years, and it has entered into a bloody 
league with the dynasty, which had to secure to 
the impatient Russian capitalists their part of 
the world's booty by new land robberies. While 
Czarism stormed and devastated Galicia, and 
deprived it even of the rags and tatters of lib- 
erty granted to it by the Hapsburgs, while it 
dismembered unhappy Persia, and from the 
corner of the Bosporus strove to throw the 
noose around the neck of the Balkan peoples, 
it left to the liberalism which it despised the 
task of concealing its robbery by sickening dec- 
lamations over the defense of Belgium and 
France. The year 1914 spells the complete 
bankruptcy of Russian liberalism, and makes 
the Russian proletariat the sole champion of 
the war of liberation. It makes the Russian 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 31 

Revolution definitely an integral part of the 
Social Revolution of the European proletariat. 
In our war against Czarism, in which we 
have never known a "national" truce, we have 
never looked for help from Hapsburg or Ho- 
henzollern militarism, and we are not looking 
for it now. We have preserved a sufficiently 
clear revolutionary vision to know that the idea 
of destroying Czarism was utterly repugnant 
to German imperialism. Czarism has been its 
best ally on the Eastern border. It is united to 
it by close ties of social structure and historical 
aims. Yet even if it were otherwise, even if it 
could be assumed that, in obedience to the logic 
of military operations, it would deal a destruc- 
tive blow to Czarism, in defiance of the logic 
of its own political interests — even in such a 
highly improbable case we should refuse to re- 
gard the Hohenzollerns not only as an objec- 
tive but as a subjective ally. The fate of the 
Russian Revolution is so inseparably bound up 



32 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

with the fate of European Socialism, and we 
Russian Socialists stand so firmly on the 
ground of internationalism, that we cannot, we 
must not for a moment, entertain the idea of 
purchasing the doubtful liberation of Russia 
by the certain destruction of the liberty of Bel- 
gium and France, and — what is more impor- 
tant still — thereby inoculating the German and 
Austrian proletariat with the virus of impe- 
rialism. 

We are united by many ties to the German 
Social Democracy. We have all gone through 
the German Socialist school, and learned les- 
sons from its successes as well as from its fail- 
ures. The German Social Democracy was to 
us not only a party of the International. It 
was the Party par excellence. We have always 
preserved and fortified the fraternal bond that 
united us with the Austrian Social Democracy. 
On the other hand, we have always taken pride 
in the fact that we have made our modest con- 



AUTHOB'S PREFACE 33 

tribution towards winning suffrage in Austria 
and arousing revolutionary tendencies in the 
German working class. It cost more than one 
drop of blood to do it. We have unhesitatingly 
accepted moral and material support from our 
older brother who fought for the same ends as 
we on the other side of our Western border. 

Yet it is just because of this respect for the 
past, and still more out of respect for the fu- 
ture, which ought to unite the working class of 
Russia with the working classes of Germany 
and Austria, that we indignantly reject the 
"liberating" aid which German imperialism of- 
fers us in a Krupp munition box, with the bless- 
ing, alas ! of German Socialism. And we hope 
that the indignant protest of Russian Socialism 
will be loud enough to be heard in Berlin and in 
Vienna. 

The collapse of the Second International is 
a tragic fact, and it were blindness or cow- 



34 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

ardice to close one's eyes to it. The position 
taken by the French and by the larger part of 
English Socialism is as much a part of this 
breakdown as the position of the German and 
Austrian Social Democracy. If the present 
work addresses itself chiefly to the German So- 
cial Democracy it is only because the German 
party was the strongest, most influential, and 
in principle the most basic member of the So- 
cialist world. Its historic capitulation reveals 
most clearly the causes of the downfall of the 
Second International. At first glance it may 
appear that the social revolutionary prospects 
of the future are wholly deceptive. The insolv- 
ency of the old Socialist parties has become 
catastrophically apparent. Why should we 
have faith in the future of the Socialist move- 
ment? Such skepticism, though natural, never- 
theless leads to quite an erroneous conclusion. 
It leaves out of account the good will of his- 
tory, just as we have often been too prone to 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 35 

ignore its ill will, which has now so cruelly- 
shown itself in the fate that has overcome the 
International. 

The present War signalizes the collapse of 
the national states. The Socialist parties of 
the epoch now concluded were national parties. 
They had become ingrained in the national 
states with all the different branches of their 
organizations, with all their activities and with 
their psychology. In the face of the solemn 
declarations at their congresses they rose to 
the defense of the conservative state, when im- 
perialism, grown big on the national soil, began 
to demolish the antiquated national barriers. 
And in their historic crash the national states 
have pulled down with them the national So- 
cialist parties also. 

It is not Socialism that has gone down, but 
its temporary historical external form. The 
revolutionary idea begins its life anew as it 
casts off its old rigid shell. This shell is made 



36 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

up of living human beings, of an entire gen- 
eration of Socialists that has become fossilized 
in self -abnegating work of agitation and or- 
ganization through a period of several decades 
of political reaction, and has fallen into the 
habits and views of national opportunism or 
possibilism. All efforts to save the Second In- 
ternational on the old basis, by personal diplo- 
matic methods and mutual concessions, are 
quite hopeless. The old mole of history is now 
digging its passageways all too well and none 
has the power to stop him. 

As the national states have become a hin- 
drance to the development of the forces of pro- 
duction, so the old Socialist parties have be- 
come the main hindrance to the revolutionary 
movement of the working class. It was neces- 
sary that they should demonstrate to the full 
their extreme backwardness, that they should 
discredit their utterly inadequate and narrow 
methods, and bring the shame and horror of 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 37 

national discord upon the proletariat, in order 
that the working class might emancipate itself, 
through these fearful disillusionments, from 
the prejudices and slavish habits of the period 
of preparation, and become at last that which 
the voice of history is now calling it to be — the 
revolutionary class fighting for power. 

The Second International has not lived in 
vain. It has accomplished a huge cultural 
work. There has been nothing like it in history 
before. It has educated and assembled the op- 
pressed classes. The proletariat does not now 
need to begin at the beginning. It enters on 
the new road not with empty hands. The past 
epoch has bequeathed to it a rich arsenal of 
ideas. It has bequeathed to it the weapons of 
criticism. The new epoch will teach the pro- 
letariat to combine the old weapons of criticism 
with the new criticism of weapons. 

This book was written in extreme haste, un- 
der conditions far from favorable to systematic 



38 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

work. A large part of it is devoted to the old 
International which has fallen. But the entire 
book, from the first to the last page, was writ- 
ten with the idea of the New International con- 
stantly in mind, the New International which 
must rise up out of the present world cata- 
clysm, the International of the last conflict and 
the final victory. 

Leon Trotzky. 



THE BOLSHEVIKI AND 
WORLD PEACE 

CHAPTER I 

THE BALKAN QUESTION 

"The War at present being waged against 
Russian Czarism and its vassals is dominated 
by a great historic idea. The impetus of this 
great historic idea consecrates the battlefields 
of Poland and of Eastern Russia. The roar 
of cannon, the rattling of machine guns, and 
the onrush of cavalry, all betoken the en- 
forcement of the democratic programme for 
the liberation of the nations. Had Czarism, 
in league with the French capitalistic pow- 
ers and in league with an unscrupulous 'na- 
tion of shopkeepers,' not succeeded in sup- 
pressing the Revolution of 1905, the present 



40 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

slaughter of the nations would have been 
avoided. 

"A democratic Russia would never have 
consented to wage this unscrupulous and fu- 
tile War. The great ideas of freedom and 
justice now speak the persuasive language of 
the machine gun and the sword, and every 
heart susceptible of sympathy with justice 
and humanity can only wish that the power 
of Czarism may be destroyed once for all, 
and that the oppressed Russian nationalities 
may again secure the right to decide their 
own destinies." 

The above quotation is from the Nepszava 
of August 31, 1914, the official organ of the 
Socialist party of Hungary. Hungary is the 
land whose entire inner life was erected upon 
the high-handed oppression of the national 
minorities, upon the enslavement of the labor- 
ing classes, upon the official parasitism and 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 41 

usury of the ruling caste of large landowners. 
It is the land in which men like Tisza are mas- 
ters of the situation, dyed-in-the-wool agrari- 
ans, with the manners of political bandits. In 
a word, Hungary is a country closest of kin 
to Czar-ruled Russia. 

So what is more fitting than that the Neps- 
zava, the Socialist organ of Hungary, should 
hail with outbursts of enthusiasm the liberating 
mission of the German and Austro-Hungarian 
armies? Who other than Count Tisza could 
have felt the call to "enforce the democratic 
programme for the liberation of the nations"? 
Who was there to uphold the eternal principles 
of law and justice in Europe but the ruling 
clique of Budapest, the discredited Panamists ? 
Would you entrust this mission to the unscru- 
pulous diplomacy of "perfidious Albion," to 
the nation of shopkeepers ? 

Laughter turns away wrath. The tragic in- 
consistencies of the policies followed by the In- 



42 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

ternational not only reach their climax in the 
articles of the poor Nepszava; they disarm us 
by their humor. 

The present series of events began with the 
ultimatum sent to Servia by Austria- Hungary. 
There was not the slightest reason why the in- 
ternational Social Democracy should take un- 
der its protection the intrigues of the Serbs or 
any other of the petty dynasties of the Balkan 
Peninsula. They were all endeavoring to hide 
their political adventures under the cloak of 
national aspirations. We had still less cause 
to lash ourselves into a state of moral indigna- 
tion because a fanatic young Serb responded to 
the cowardly, criminal and wily national poli- 
tics of the Vienna and Budapest government 
authorities with a bloody assassination.* 

* It is noteworthy that these opportunistic Austrian and Ger- 
man Socialists are now writhing with moral indignation over 
the "treacherous assassination at Sarajevo." And yet they 
always sympathized with the Russian terrorists more than we, 
the Russian Social Democrats, did, who are opposed on prin- 
ciple to the terroristic method. Lost in the mist of chauvinism, 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 43 

Of one thing we have no doubt. In the deal- 
ings between the Danube Monarchy and the 
Servian government, the historic right, that is 
to say, the right of free development, rests en- 
tirely with Servia, just as Italy was in the right 
in the year 1859. Underneath the duel between 
the imperial police scoundrels and the terrorists 
of Belgrade, there is hidden a far deeper mean- 
ing than merely the greed of the Kareorgoie- 
vitches or the crimes of the Czar's diplomacy. 
On one side were the imperialistic claims of a 
national state that had lost its vitality, and on 
the other side, the strivings of the dismembered 
Servian nation to reintegrate itself into a na- 
tional whole and become a living vital state. 

Is it for this that we have sat so long in the 

they can no longer see that the unfortunate Servian terrorist, 
Gavrilo Prinzip, represents precisely the same national prin- 
ciple as the German terrorist, Sand. Perhaps they will even 
ask us to transfer our sympathies from Sand to Kotzebue? Or 
perhaps these eunuchs will advise the Swiss to overthrow the 
monuments erected to the assassin Tell and replace them with 
monuments to the Austrian governor, Gessler, one of the spir- 
itual forerunners of the murdered archduke? 



44 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

school of Socialism to forget the first three let- 
ters of the democratic alphabet? This absolute 
lapse of memory, moreover, made its appear- 
ance only after the fourth of August. Up to 
that fatal date the German Marxists showed 
that they knew very well what was happening 
in Southeastern Europe. 

On July 3, 1914, after the assassination at 
Sarajevo, the Vorwdrts wrote: 

' 'The bourgeois revolution of the South 
Slavs is in full swing, and the shooting at 
Sarajevo, however wild and senseless an act 
in itself, is as much a chapter of this revolu- 
tion as the battles by which the Bulgarians, 
Serbs and Montenegrins liberated the peas- 
ants of Macedonia from the yoke of Turkish 
feudal exploitation. Is it a wonder that the 
South Slavs of Austria-Hungary look with 
longing to their racial brothers in the king- 
dom of Servia? The Serbs in Servia have 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 45 

attained the highest goal a people can attain 
in the present order of society. They have 
attained national independence. Whereas 
in Vienna or Budapest they treat every one 
bearing the name of Serb or Croatian with 
blows and kicks, with court-martial justice 
and the gallows. . . . There are seven and a 
half million South Slavs who, as a result of 
the victories in the Balkans, have grown 
bolder than ever in demanding their political 
rights. And if the imperial throne of Aus- 
tria continues to resist their impact, it will 
topple over and the entire Empire with which 
we have coupled our destiny will break to 
pieces. For it is in line with historic evolu- 
tion that such national revolutions should 
march onward to victory." 

If the international Social Democracy to- 
gether with its Servian contingent, offered un- 
yielding resistance to Servia's national claims, 



46 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

it was certainly not out of any consideration for 
the historic rights of Austria-Hungary to op- 
press and disintegrate the nationalities living 
within her borders ; and most certainly not out 
of consideration for the liberating mission of 
the Hapsburgs. Until August, 1914, no one, 
except the black and yellow hirelings of the 
press, dared to breathe a word about that. The 
Socialists were influenced in their course of 
conduct by entirely different motives. First of 
all, the proletariat, although by no means dis- 
puting the historic right of Servia to strive for 
national unity, could not trust the solution of 
this problem to the powers then controlling the 
destinies of the Servian kingdom. And in the 
second place — and this was for us the deciding 
factor — the international Social Democracy 
could not sacrifice the peace of Europe to the 
national cause of the Serbs, recognizing, as it 
did, that, except for a European revolution, 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 47 

the only way such unity could be achieved was 
through a European war. 

But from the moment Austria-Hungary car- 
ried the question of her own fate and that of 
Servia to the battlefield, Socialists could no 
longer have the slightest doubt that social and 
national progress would be hit much harder in 
Southeastern Europe by a Hapsburg victory 
than by a Servian victory. To be sure, there 
was still no reason for us Socialists to identify 
our cause with the aims of the Servian army. 
This was the idea that animated the Servian 
Socialists, Ljaptchevitch and Katzlerovitch, 
when they took the manly stand of voting 
against the war credits.* But surely we had 

* To appreciate fully this action of the Servian Socialists we 
must bear in mind the political situation by which they were 
confronted. A group of Servian conspirators had murdered a 
member of the Hapsburg family, the mainstay of Austro-Hun- 
garian clericalism, militarism, and imperialism. Using this as 
a welcome pretext, the military party in Vienna sent an ulti- 
matum to Servia, which, for sheer audacity, has scarcely ever 
been paralleled in diplomatic history. In reply, the Servian 
government made extraordinary concessions, and suggested that 
the solution of the question in dispute be turned over to the 



48 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

still less reason to support the purely dynastic 
rights of the Hapsburgs and the imperialistic 
interests of the feudal-capitalistic cliques 
against the national struggle of the Serbs. At 
all events, the Austro-Hungarian Social De- 
mocracy, which now invokes its blessings upon 
the sword of the Hapsburgs for the liberation 
of the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Finns and 
the Russian people, must first of all clarify its 
ideas on the Servian question, which it has got- 
ten so hopelessly muddled. 

The question at issue, however, is not con- 
Hague tribunal. Thereupon Austria declared war on Servia. 
If the idea of a "war of defense" has any meaning at all, it 
certainly applied to Servia in this instance. Nevertheless, our 
friends, Ljaptchevitch and Katzlerovitch, unshaken in their 
conviction of the course of action that they as Socialists must 
pursue, refused the government a vote of confidence. The 
writer was in Servia at the beginning of the War. In the 
Skuptchina, in an atmosphere of indescribable national enthu- 
siasm, a vote was taken on the war credits. The voting was 
by roll-call. Two hundred members had all answered "Yes." 
Then in a moment of deathlike silence came the voice of the 
Socialist Ljaptchevitch — "No." Every one felt the moral force 
of this protest, and the scene has remained indelibly impressed 
upon my memory. 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 49 

fined to the fate of the ten million Serbs. The 
clash of the European nations has brought up 
the entire Balkan question anew. The Peace 
of Bucharest, signed in 1903, has solved neither 
the national nor the international problems in 
the Near East. It has only intensified the 
added confusion resulting from the two unfin- 
ished Balkan Wars, unfinished because of the 
complete temporary exhaustion of the nations 
participating in it. 

Roumania had followed in the path of 
Austro-Hungarian politics, despite the Ro- 
manesque sympathies of its population, espe- 
cially in the cities. This was due not so much 
to dynastic causes, to the fact that a Hohen- 
zollern prince occupied the throne, as to the 
imminent danger of a Russian invasion. In 
1879 the Russian Czar, as thanks for Rou- 
mania's support in the Russo-Turkish war of 
"liberation," cut off a slice of Roumanian ter- 
ritory, the province of Bessarabia. This elo- 



50 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

quent deed provided a sufficient backing to the 
dynastic sympathies of the Hohenzollern in 
Bucharest. But the Magyar-Hap sburg clique 
succeeded in incensing the Roumanian people 
against them by their denationalizing policy in 
Transylvania, which has a population of three 
million Roumanians as against three-fourths of 
a million in the Russian province of Bessarabia; 
and they further antagonized them by their 
commercial treaties, which were dictated by the 
interests of the large Austro-Hungarian land- 
owners. So that Roumania's entrance into the 
War on the side of the Czar, despite the cour- 
ageous and active agitation against participa- 
tion in the War on either side, carried on by the 
Socialist party under the leadership of my 
friends Gherea and Rakowsky, is to be 
laid altogether at the door of the ruling class 
of Austria-Hungary, who are reaping the 
harvest they have sown here as well as else- 
where. 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 51 

But the matter is not disposed of by fixing 
the historical responsibility. To-morrow, in a 
month, in a year or more the War will bring to 
the foreground the whole question of the des- 
tiny of the Balkan peoples and of Austria- 
Hungary, and the proletariat will have to have 
its answer to this question. European democ- 
racy in the nineteenth century looked with dis- 
trust at the Balkan people's struggle for inde- 
pendence, because it feared that Russia might 
be strengthened at the expense of Turkey. On 
this subject Karl Marx wrote in 1853, on the 
eve of the Crimean War: 

"It may be said that the more firmly estab- 
lished Servia and the Servian nationality is 
the more the direct influence of Russia on the 
Turkish Slavs is shoved into the background. 
For in order to be able to assert its peculiar 
position as a state, Servia had to import its 
political institutions, its schools . . . from 
Western Europe." 



52 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

This prophecy has been brilliantly fulfilled 
in what has actually happened in Bulgaria, 
which was created by Russia as an outpost on 
the Balkans. As soon as Bulgaria was fairly 
well established as a national state, it developed 
a strong anti-Russian party, under the leader- 
ship of Russia's former pupil, Stambulov, and 
this party was able to stamp its iron seal upon 
the entire foreign policy of the young country. 
The whole mechanism of the political parties 
in Bulgaria is so constructed as to enable it to 
steer between the two European combinations 
without being absolutely forced into the chan- 
nel of either, unless it chooses to enter it of its 
own accord. Roumania went with the Austro- 
German alliance, Servia, since 1903, with Rus- 
sia, because the one was menaced directly by 
Russia, the other by Austria. The more inde- 
pendent the countries of Southeast Europe are 
from Austria-Hungary, the more effectively 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 53 

they will be able to protect their independence 
against Czarism. 

The balance of power in the Balkans, created 
by the Congress of Berlin in 1879, was full of 
contradictions. Cut up by artificial ethno- 
graphical boundaries, placed under the control 
of imported dynasties from German nurseries, 
bound hand and foot by the intrigues of the 
Great Powers, the peoples of the Balkans could 
not cease their efforts for further national free- 
dom and unity. The national politics of inde- 
pendent Bulgaria was naturally directed to- 
wards Macedonia, populated by Bulgarians. 
The Berlin Congress had left it under Turkish 
rule. On the other hand, Servia had practically 
nothing to look for in Turkey with the excep- 
tion of the little strip of land, the sandbag 
Novy Bazar. Its national interests lay on the 
other side of the Austro-Hungarian boundary, 
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slavonia and 
Dalmatia. Roumania had no interests in the 



54 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOBLD PEACE 

south, where it is separated from European 
Turkey by Servia and Bulgaria. Roumania's 
expansion policy was directed towards the 
northwest and east, towards Hungarian Tran- 
sylvania and Russian Bessarabia. Finally, the 
national expansion of Greece, like that of Bul- 
garia, collided with Turkey. 

Austro- German politics, aiming at the arti- 
ficial preservation of European Turkey, broke 
down not on account of the diplomatic in- 
trigues of Russia, although these of course 
were not lacking. It broke down because of 
the inevitable course of evolution. The Balkan 
Peninsula had entered on the path of capitalist 
development, and it was this fact that raised 
the question of the self-determination of the 
Balkan peoples as national states to the his- 
torical issue of the day. 

The Balkan War disposed of European 
Turkey, and thereby created the conditions 
necessary for the solution of the Bulgarian and 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 55 

Greek questions. But Servia and Roumania, 
whose national completion could only be 
achieved at the expense of Austria-Hungary, 
found themselves checked in their efforts at ex- 
pansion southwards, and were compensated at 
the expense of what racially belonged to Bul- 
garia — Servia in Macedonia, and Roumania in 
Dobrudja. This is the meaning of the second 
Balkan War and the Peace of Bucharest by 
which it was concluded. 

The mere existence of Austria- Hungary, 
this Turkey of Middle Europe, blocks the way 
to the natural self-determination of the peo- 
ples of the Southeast. It compels them to keep 
constantly righting against each other, to seek 
support against each other from the outside, 
and so makes them the tool of the political com- 
binations of the Great Powers. It was only in 
such chaos that Czaristic diplomacy was en- 
abled to spin the web of its Balkan politics, the 
last thread of which was Constantinople. And 



56 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

only a federation of the Balkan states, both 
economic and military, can interpose an in- 
vincible barrier to the greed of Czarism. 

Now that European Turkey has been dis- 
posed of, it is Austria-Hungary that stands in 
the way of a federation of the Balkan states. 
Roumania, Bulgaria, and Servia would have 
found their natural boundaries, and would 
have united with Greece and Turkey, on the 
basis of common economic interests, into a 
league of defense. This would finally have 
brought peace to the Balkan Peninsula, that 
witches' cauldron which periodically threatened 
Europe with explosions, until it drew it into 
the present catastrophe. 

Up to a certain time the Socialists had to 
reconcile themselves to the routine way in which 
the Balkan question was treated by capitalistic 
diplomats, who in their conferences and secret 
agreements stopped up one hole only to open 
another, even wider one. So long as this dil- 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 57 

atory method kept postponing the final solu- 
tion, the Socialist International could hope that 
the settlement of the Hapsburg succession 
would be a matter not for a European war, but 
for the European Revolution. But now that 
the War has destroyed the equilibrium of the 
whole of Europe, and the predatory Powers 
are seeking to remodel the map of Europe — 
not on the basis of national democratic princi- 
ples, but of military strength — the Social De- 
mocracy must come to a clear comprehension 
of the fact that one of the chief obstacles to 
freedom, peace and progress, in addition to 
Czarism and German militarism, is the Haps- 
burg Monarchy as a state organization. The 
crime of the Galician Socialist group under 
Daszynski consisted not only in placing the 
Polish cause above the cause of Socialism, but 
also in linking the fate of Poland with the fate 
of the Austro-Hungarian armies and the fate 
of the Hapsburg Monarchy. 



58 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

The Socialist proletariat of Europe cannot 
adopt such a solution of the question. For us 
the question of united and independent Poland 
is on a par with the question of united and in- 
dependent Servia. We cannot and we will not 
permit the Polish question to be solved by 
methods which will perpetuate the chaos at 
present prevailing in Southeastern Europe, in 
fact through the whole of Europe. For us 
Socialists the independence of Poland means 
its independence on both fronts, on the Roman- 
off front and on the Hapsburg front. We not 
only wish the Polish people to be free from the 
oppression of Czarism. We wish also that the 
fate of the Servian people shall not be depend- 
ent upon the Polish nobility in Galicia. 

For the present we need not consider what 
the relations of an independent Poland will be 
to Bohemia, Hungary and the Balkan Federa- 
tion. But it is perfectly clear that a complex 
of medium-sized and small states on the Dan- 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 59 

ube and in the Balkan Peninsula will consti- 
tute a far more effective bar to the Czaristic 
designs on Europe than the weak, chaotic Aus- 
tro-Hungarian State, which proves its right to 
existence only by its continued attempts upon 
the peace of Europe. 

In the article of 1853, quoted above, Marx 
wrote as follows on the Eastern question: 

"We have seen that the statesmen of Eu- 
rope, in their obdurate stupidity, petrified 
routine, and hereditary intellectual indolence, 
recoil from every attempt at answering the 
question of what is to become of Turkey in 
Europe. The driving force that favors Rus- 
sia's advance towards Constantinople is the 
very means by which it is thought to keep 
her away from it, the empty theory, never 
carried out, of maintaining the status quo. 
What is this status quo? For the Christian 
subjects of the Porte it means nothing else 



60 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

than the perpetuation of their oppression by 
Turkey. As long as they are under the yoke 
of the Turkish rule, they look upon the head 
of the Greek Church, the ruler of 60 million 
Greek Church Christians, as their natural 
protector and liberator" 

What is here said of Turkey now applies in 
a still greater degree to Austria-Hungary. 
The solution of the Balkan question is un- 
thinkable without the solution of the Austro- 
Hungarian question, as they are both com- 
prised in one and the same formula — the Demo- 
cratic Federation of the Danube and Balkan 
Nations. 

"The governments with their old-fashioned 
diplomacy," wrote Marx, "will never solve the 
difficulty. Like the solution of so many other 
problems, the Turkish problem, too, is re- 
served for the European Revolution." This 
statement holds just as good to-day as when it 



THE BALKAN QUESTION 61 

was first written. But for the Revolution to 
solve the difficulties that have piled up in the 
course of centuries, the proletariat must have 
its own programme for the solution of the 
Austro-Hungarian question. And this pro- 
gramme it must oppose just as strenuously to 
the Czaristic greed of conquest as to the cow- 
ardly and conservative efforts to maintain the 
Austro-Hungarian status quo. 



CHAPTER II 

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

Russian Czarism undoubtedly represents a 
cruder and more barbarian form of state or- 
ganization than does the feebler absolutism of 
Austria-Hungary, which has been mitigated by 
the weakness of old age. But Russian Czar- 
ism and the Russian state are by no means iden- 
tical. The destruction of Czarism does not 
mean the disintegration of the state. On the 
contrary it means its liberation and its strength- 
ening. All such assertions, as that it is neces- 
sary to push Russia back into Asia, which 
found an echo even in certain Social Demo- 
cratic organs, are based on a poor knowledge of 
geography and ethnography. Whatever may 
be the fate of various parts of present Russia 
— Russian Poland, Finland, the Ukraine or 

62 



AUSTKIA-HUNGABY 63 

Bessarabia — European Russia will not cease to 
exist as the national territory of a many-mil- 
lioned race that has made notable conquests 
along the line of cultural development during 
the last quarter century. 

Quite different is the case of Austria-Hun- 
gary. As a state organization it is identical 
with the Hapsburg Monarchy. It stands or 
falls with the Hapsburgs, just as European 
Turkey was identical with the feudal-military 
Ottoman caste and fell when that caste fell. A 
conglomerate of racial fragments centrifugal 
in tendency, yet forced by a dynasty to stick 
together, Austria-Hungary presents the most 
reactionary picture in the very heart of Europe. 
Its continuation after the present European 
catastrophe would not only delay the develop- 
ment of the Danube and Balkan peoples for 
more decades to come and make a repetition of 
the present War a practical certainty, but it 
would also strengthen Czarism politically by 



64 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

preserving its main source of spiritual nourish- 
ment. 

If the German Social Democracy reconciles 
itself to the ruin of France by regarding it as 
punishment for France's alliance with Czarism, 
then we must ask that the same criterion be 
applied to the German- Austrian alliance. And 
if the alliance of the two Western democracies 
with a despotic Czarism gives the lie to the 
French and English press when they represent 
the War as one of liberation, then is it not 
equally arrogant, if not more so, for the Ger- 
man Social Democracy to spread the banner of 
liberty over the Hohenzollern army, the army 
that is fighting not only against Czarism and 
its allies but also for the entrenchment of the 
Hapsburg Monarchy? 

Austria-Hungary is indispensable to Ger- 
many, to the ruling class in Germany as we 
know it. When the ruling Junker class threw 
France into the arms of Czarism by the force- 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 65 

ful annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and sys- 
tematically embittered the relations with Eng- 
land by rapidly increasing naval armaments; 
when it repulsed all attempts at an understand- 
ing with the Western democracies because such 
an understanding would have implied the de- 
mocratization of Germany — then this ruling 
class saw itself compelled to seek support from 
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as a reserve 
source of military strength against the enemies 
in the East and the West. 

According to the German point of view the 
mission of the Dual Monarchy was to place 
Hungarian, Polish, Roumanian, Czech, Ruthe- 
nian, Servian and Italian auxiliaries in the 
service of the German military and Junker 
policy. The ruling class in Germany had 
easily reconciled itself to the expatriation of 
ten to twelve millions of Germans, for these 
twelve millions formed the kernel around which 
the Hapsburgs united a non-German popula- 



66 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

tion of more than forty million. A democratic 
federation of independent Danube nations 
would have made these peoples useless as allies 
of German militarism. Only a monarchy, in 
Austria-Hungary, a monarchy enforced by 
militarism, would make that country of any 
value as an ally to Junker Germany. The 
indispensable condition for this alliance, sanc- 
tified by the Nibelungen troth of dynasties, 
was the military preparedness of Austria-Hun- 
gary, a condition to be achieved in no other way 
than by the mechanical suppression of the cen- 
trifugal national tendencies. 

Since Austria-Hungary is surrounded on all 
sides by states composed of the same races as 
are within its own borders, its foreign policy 
is necessarily intimately connected with its in- 
ternal policy. To keep seven million Serbs 
and South Slavs within the frame of its own 
military state, Austria-Hungary is compelled 
to extinguish the hearthfire that kindles their 



AUSTEIA-HUNGAEY 67 

political leanings — the independent kingdom 
of Servia. 

Austria's ultimatum to Servia was the de- 
cisive step in this direction. "Austria-Hun- 
gary took this step under the pressure of ne- 
cessity/' wrote Eduard Bernstein in Die So- 
zialistische Monatshefte (No. 16) . To be sure 
it was, if political events are considered from 
the viewpoint of dynastic necessity. 

To defend the Hapsburg policy on the 
ground of the low moral standard of the Bel- 
grade rulers is to close one's eyes to the fact 
that the Hapsburgs did make friends with 
Servia, but only when Servia was under the 
most despicable government that the history of 
the unfortunate Balkan Peninsula has known, 
that is, when it had at its head an Austrian 
agent, Milan. The reckoning with Servia came 
so late because the efforts made at self-preser- 
vation were too weak in the enfeebled organism 
of the Dual Monarchy. But after the death of 



68 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

the Archduke, the support and hope of the 
Austrian military party — and of Berlin — Aus- 
tria's ally gave her a sharp dig in the ribs, in- 
sisting upon a demonstration of firmness and 
strength. Not only was Austria's ultimatum 
to Servia approved of in advance by the rulers 
of Germany, but, according to all information, 
it was actually inspired from that quarter. The 
evidence is plainly set forth in the very same 
White Book which professional and amateur 
diplomats offer as a document of the Hohen- 
zollern love of peace. 

After defining the aims of Greater Servian 
propaganda and the machinations of Czarism 
in the Balkans, the White Book states : 

"Under such conditions Austria was 
forced to the realization that it was not com- 
patible with the dignity or the self-preserva- 
tion of the Monarchy to look on at the doings 
across the border and remain passive. The 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 69 

Imperial Government informed us of this 
view and asked for our opinion. We could 
sincerely tell our ally that we agreed with 
his estimate of the situation and could as- 
sure him that any action he might find neces- 
sary to put an end to the movement in Ser- 
via against the Austrian Monarchy would 
meet with our approval. In doing so, we 
were well aware of the fact that eventual war 
operations on the part of Austria- Hungary 
might bring Russia into the field and might, 
according to the terms of our alliance, in- 
volve us in a war. 

"But in view of the vital interests of Aus- 
tria-Hungary that were at stake, we could 
not advise our ally to show a leniency incom- 
patible with his dignity, or refuse him our 
support in a moment of such grave portent. 
We were the less able to do so because our 
own interests also were vitally threatened by 
the persistent agitation in Servia. If the 



70 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

Serbs, aided by Russia and France, had 
been allowed to go on endangering the sta- 
bility of our neighboring Monarchy, this 
would have led to the gradual breakdown of 
Austria and to the subjection of all the 
Slavic races to the Russian rule. And this 
in turn would have made the position of the 
Germanic race in Central Europe quite pre- 
carious. An Austria morally weakened, 
breaking down before the advance of Rus- 
sian Pan-Slavism, would not be an ally with 
whom we could reckon and on whom we 
could depend, as we are obliged to depend, 
in the face of the increasingly threatening 
attitude of our neighbors to the East and the 
West. We therefore left Austria a free 
hand in its action against Servia." 

The relation of the ruling class in Germany 
to the Austro- Servian conflict is here fully and 
clearly defined. It is not merely that Ger- 



AUSTEIA-HUNGAEY 71 

many was informed by the Austrian Govern- 
ment of the latter's intentions, not merely that 
she approved them, and not merely that she ac- 
cepted the consequences of fidelity to an ally. 
No, Germany looked on Austria's aggression 
as unavoidable, as a saving act for herself, and 
actually made it a condition of the continuance 
of the alliance. Otherwise, "Austria would not 
be an ally with whom we could reckon." 

The German Marxists were fully aware of 
this state of affairs and of the dangers lurking 
in it. On June 29th, a day after the murder of 
the Austrian Archduke, the Vorwarts wrote 
as follows: 

"The fate of our nation has been all too 
closely knit with that of Austria as a result 
of a bungling foreign policy. Our rulers 
have made the alliance with Austria the basis 
of our entire foreign policy. Yet it becomes 
clearer every day that this alliance is a source 



72 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

of weakness rather than of strength. The 
problem of Austria threatens more and more 
to become a menace to the peace of Europe. 3 ' 

A month later, when the menace was about 
to culminate in the dread actuality of war, on 
July 28th, the chief organ of the German So- 
cial Democracy wrote in equally definite terms. 
"How shall the German proletariat act in the 
face of such a senseless paroxysm?" it asked; 
and then gave the answer : "The German pro- 
letariat is not in the least interested in the pres- 
ervation of the Austrian national chaos" 

Quite the contrary. Democratic Germany is 
far more interested in the disruption than in 
the preservation of Austria-Hungary. A dis- 
rupted Austria-Hungary would mean a gain 
to Germany of an educated population of 
twelve million and a capital city of the first 
rank, Vienna. Italy would achieve national 
completion, and would cease to play the role 



AUSTKIA-HUNGARY 73 

of the incalculable factor that she always has 
been in the Triple Alliance. An independent 
Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and a Balkan 
Federation including a Roumania of ten mil- 
lion inhabitants on the Russian frontier, would 
be a mighty bulwark against Czarism. And 
most important of all, a democratic Germany 
with a population of 75,000,000 Germans could 
easily, without the Hohenzollerns and the rul- 
ing Junkers, come to an agreement with 
France and England and could isolate Czar- 
ism and condemn its foreign and internal pol- 
icies to complete impotence. A policy directed 
towards this goal would indeed be a policy of 
liberation for the people of Russia as well as 
of Austria-Hungary. But such a policy re- 
quires an essential preliminary condition, 
namely, that the German people, instead of 
entrusting the Hohenzollerns with the libera- 
tion of other nations, should set about liberat- 
ing themselves from the Hohenzollerns. 



74 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

The attitude of the German and Austro- 
Hungarian Social Democracy in this war is in 
blatant contradiction to such aims. At the 
present moment it seems convinced of the ne- 
cessity of preserving and strengthening the 
Hapsburg Monarchy in the interests of Ger- 
many or of the German nation. And it is ab- 
solutely from this anti- democratic viewpoint — 
which drives the blush of shame to the cheek of 
every internationally minded Socialist — that 
the Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung formulates the 
historical meaning of the present War, when it 
declares "it is primarily a war [of the Allies] 
against the German spirit." 

"Whether diplomacy has acted wisely, 
whether this has had to come, time alone can 
decide. Now the fate of the German nation 
is at stake! And there can be no hesitation, no 
wavering! The German people are one in the 
inflexible iron determination not to bend to the 
yoke, and neither death nor devil can succeed" 



AUSTRIA-HUNGAKY 75 

— and so forth and so on. ( Wiener Arbeiter- 
Zeitung, August 5th. ) We will not offend the 
political and literary taste of the reader by con- 
tinuing this quotation. Nothing is said here 
about the mission of liberating other nations. 
Here the object of the war is to preserve and 
secure "German humanity." 

The defense of German culture, German 
soil, German humanity seems to be the mis- 
sion not only of the German army but of the 
Austro-Hungarian army as well. Serb must 
fight against Serb, Pole against Pole, Ukra- 
nian against Ukranian, for the sake of "Ger- 
man humanity." The forty million non- Ger- 
man nationalities of Austria-Hungary are con- 
sidered as simply historical manure for the field 
of German culture. That this is not the stand- 
point of international Socialism, it is not neces- 
sary to point out. It is not even pure national 
democracy in its most elementary form. The 
Austro-Hungarian General Staff explains 



76 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

this "humanity" in its communique of Septem- 
ber 18th: "All peoples of our revered mon- 
archy, as our military oath says, 'against any 
enemy no matter whom,' must stand together 
as one, vying with one another in courage." 

The Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung accepts in its 
entirety this Hapsburg-Hohenzollern view- 
point of the Austro-Hungarian problem as an 
unnational military reservoir. It is the same 
attitude as the militarists of France have to- 
ward the Senegalese and the Moroccans, and 
the English have toward the Hindus. And 
when we consider that such opinions are not a 
new phenomenon among the German Socialists 
of Austria, we have found the main reason why 
the Austrian Social Democracy broke up so 
miserably into national groups, and thus re- 
duced its political importance to a minimum. 

The disintegration of the Austrian Social 
Democracy into national parts fighting among 
themselves, is one expression of the inadequacy 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 77 

of Austria as a state organization. At the same 
time the attitude of the German- Austrian So- 
cial Democracy proved that it was itself the 
sorry victim of this inadequacy, to which it ca- 
pitulated spiritually. When it proved itself 
impotent to unite the many-raced Austrian 
proletariat under the principles of Interna- 
tionalism, and finally gave up this task alto- 
gether, the Austro- German Social Democracy 
subordinated all Austria-Hungary and even 
its own policies to the "Idea" of Prussian 
Junker Nationalism. This utter denial of prin- 
ciples speaks to us in an unprecedented man- 
ner from the pages of the Wiener Arbeiter- 
Zeitung. But if we listen more carefully to 
the tones of this hysterical nationalism we can- 
not fail to hear a graver voice, the voice of his- 
tory telling us that the path of political prog- 
ress for Central and Southeastern Europe 
leads over the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian 
Monarchy. 



CHAPTER III 

THE WAR AGAINST CZARISM 

But how about Czarism? Would not Ger- 
many's and Austria's victory mean the defeat 
of Czarism? And would not the beneficent 
results of the defeat of Czarism greatly outbal- 
ance the beneficent results of a dismembered 
Austria-Hungary ? 

The German and Austrian Social Democrats 
lay much stress upon this question in the ar- 
guing they do about the War. The crushing 
of a small neutral country, the ruin of France 
— all this is justified by the need to fight Czar- 
ism. Haase gives as the reason for voting the 
war credits the necessity of "defense against 
the danger of Russian despotism." Bernstein 
goes back to Marx and Engels and quotes old 
texts for his slogan, ''Settling with Russia!" 

78 



THE WAS AGAINST CZAEISM 79 

Siidekum, dissatisfied with the result of his 
Italian mission, says that what the Italians are 
to blame for is not understanding Czarism. 
And when the Social Democrats of Vienna and 
Budapest fall in line under the Hapsburg ban- 
ner in its "holy war" against the Servians 
struggling for their national unity, they sacri- 
fice their Socialistic honor to the necessity for 
fighting Czarism. 

And the Social Democrats are not alone in 
this. The entire bourgeois German press has 
no other aims, for the moment, than the anni- 
hilation of the Russian autocracy, which op- 
presses the peoples of Russia and menaces the 
freedom of Europe. 

The Imperial Chancellor denounces France 
and England as vassals of Russian despotism. 
Even the German Major-General von Mor- 
gen, assuredly a true and tried "friend of lib- 
erty and independence," calls on the Poles to 
rebel against the despotism of the Czar. 



80 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

But for us who have gone through the school 
of historical materialism it would be a disgrace 
if we did not perceive the actual relations of the 
interests in spite of these phrases, these lies, 
this boasting, this foul vulgarity and stupidity. 

No one can genuinely believe that the Ger- 
man reactionaries really do cherish such a 
hatred of Czarism, and are aiming their blows 
against it. On the contrary, after the War 
Czarism will be the same to the rulers of Ger- 
many that it was before the War — the most 
closely related form of government. Czarism 
is indispensable to the Germany of the Hohen- 
zollerns, for two reasons. In the first place, it 
weakens Russia economically, culturally and 
militaristically, and so prevents its develop- 
ment as an imperialistic rival. In the second 
place, the existence of Czarism strengthens the 
Hohenzollern Monarchy and the Junker oli- 
garchy, since if there were no Czarism, German 



THE WAE AGAINST CZAEISM 81 

absolutism would face Europe as the last main- 
stay of feudal barbarism. 

German absolutism never has concealed the 
interest of blood relationship that it has in the 
maintenance of Czarism, which represents the 
same social form though in more shameless 
ways. Interests, tradition, sympathies draw 
the German reactionary element to the side of 
Czarism. "Russia's sorrow is Germany's sor- 
row." At the same time the Hohenzollerns, be- 
hind the back of Czarism, can make a show of 
being the bulwark of culture "against barbar- 
ism," and can succeed in fooling their own peo- 
ple if not the rest of Western Europe. 

"With sincere sorrow I see a friendship 
broken that Germany has kept faithfully," 
said William II. in his speech upon the dec- 
laration of war, referring neither to France 
nor to England, but to Russia, or rather, to 
the Russian dynasty, in accordance with the 



82 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

Hohenzollern's Russian religion, as Marx 
would have said. 

We are told that Germany's political plan 
is to create, on the one hand, a basis of rap- 
prochement with France and England by a vic- 
tory over those countries, and, on the other 
hand, to utilize a strategic victory over France 
in order to crush Russian despotism. 

The German Social Democrats must either 
have inspired William and his chancellor with 
this plan, or else must have ascribed this plan 
to William and his chancellor. 

As a matter of fact, however, the political 
plans of the German reactionaries are of ex- 
actly the opposite character, must necessarily 
be of the opposite character. 

For the present we will leave open the ques- 
tion of whether the destructive blow at France 
was dictated by strategic considerations, and 
whether "strategy" sanctioned defensive tactics 
on the Western front. But one thing is cer- 



THE WAS AGAINST CZAEISM 83 

tain, that not to see that the policy of the Jun- 
kers required the ruin of France, is to prove 
that one has a reason for keeping one's eyes 
closed. France — France is the enemy ! 

Eduard Bernstein, who is sincerely trying to 
justify the political stand taken by the German 
Social Democracy, draws the following con- 
clusions : Were Germany under a democratic 
rule, there would be no doubt as to how to set- 
tle accounts with Czarism. A democratic Ger- 
many would conduct a revolutionary war on 
the East. It would call on the nations op- 
pressed by Russia to resist the tyrant and 
would give them the means wherewith to wage 
a powerful fight for freedom. [Quite right!] 
However, Germany is not a democracy, and 
therefore it would be a Utopian dream [Ex- 
actly!] to expect any such policy with all its 
consequences from Germany as she is. (Vor- 
warts, August 28.) Very well then! But 
right here Bernstein suddenly breaks off his 



84 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

analysis of the actual German policy "with all 
its consequences." After showing up the 
blatant contradiction in the position of the Ger- 
man Social Democracy, he closes with the un- 
expected hope that a reactionary Germany 
may accomplish what none but a revolutionary 
Germany could accomplish. Credo quia ab- 
surdum. 

Nevertheless, it might be said in opposition 
to this that while the ruling class in Germany 
has naturally no interest in fighting Czarism, 
still Russia is now Germany's enemy, and, 
quite independently of the will of the Hohen- 
zollerns, the victory of Germany over Russia 
might result in the great weakening, if not the 
complete overthrow of Czarism. Long live 
Hindenburg, the great unconscious instrument 
of the Russian Revolution, we might cry along 
with the Chemnitz Volksstimme. Long live 
the Prussian Crown Prince — also a quite un- 
conscious instrument. Long live the Sultan 



THE WAR AGAINST CZARISM 85 

of Turkey who is now serving in the cause of 
the Revolution by bombarding the Russian 
cities around the Black Sea. Happy Russian 
Revolution — how quickly the ranks of her 
army are growing ! 

However, let us see if there is not something 
really to be said on this side of the question. 
Is it not possible that the defeat of Czarism 
might actually aid the cause of the Revolution? 

As to such a possibility, there is nothing to 
be said against it. The Mikado and his Sa- 
murai were not in the least interested in freeing 
Russia, yet the Russo-Japanese War gave a 
powerful impetus to the revolutionary events 
that followed. 

Consequently similar results may be ex- 
pected from the German-Russian War. 

But to place the right political estimate upon 
these historical possibilities we must take the 
following circumstances into consideration. 

Those who believe that the Russo-Japanese 



86 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

War brought on the Revolution neither know 
nor understand historical events and their re- 
lations. The war merely hastened the out- 
break of the Revolution ; but for that very rea- 
son it also weakened it. For had the Revolu- 
tion developed as a result of the organic growth 
of inner forces, it would have come later, but 
would have been far stronger and more sys- 
tematic. Therefore, revolution has no real in- 
terest in war. This is the first consideration. 
And the second thing is, that while the Russo- 
Japanese War weakened Czarism, it strength- 
ened Japanese militarism. The same consid- 
erations apply in a still higher degree to the 
present German-Russian War. 

In the course of 1912-1914 Russia's enor- 
mous industrial development once for all 
pulled the country out of its state of counter- 
revolutionary depression. 

The growth of the revolutionary movement 
on the foundation of the economic and political 



THE WAR AGAINST CZARISM 87 

condition of the laboring masses, the growth of 
opposition in broad strata of the population, 
led to a new period of storm and stress. But in 
contrast to the years 1902-1905, this movement 
developed in a far more conscious, systematic 
manner, and, what is more, was based on a far 
broader social foundation. It needed time to 
mature, but it did not need the lances of the 
Prussian Samurai. On the contrary, the Prus- 
sian Samurai gave the Czar the opportunity of 
playing the role of defender of the Serbs, the 
Belgians and the French. 

If we presuppose a catastrophal Russian de- 
feat, the war may bring a quicker outbreak of 
the Revolution, but at the cost of its inner weak- 
ness. And if the Revolution should even gain 
the upper hand under such circumstances, then 
the bayonets of the Hohenzollern armies would 
be turned on the Revolution. Such a prospect 
can hardly fail to paralyze Russia's revolution- 
ary forces ; for it is impossible to deny the fact 



88 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

that the party of the German proletariat stands 
behind the Hohenzollern bayonets. But this 
is only one side of the question. The defeat of 
Russia necessarily presupposes decisive vic- 
tories by Germany and Austria on the other 
battlefields, and this would mean the enforced 
preservation of the national-political chaos in 
Central and Southeastern Europe and the un- 
limited mastery of German militarism in all 
Europe. 

An enforced disarmament for France, bil- 
lions in indemnities, enforced tariff walls 
around the conquered nations, and an enforced 
commercial treaty with Russia, all this in con- 
junction would make German imperialism 
master of the situation for many decades. 

Germany's new policy, which began with the 
capitulation of the party of the proletariat to 
nationalistic militarism, would be strength- 
ened for years to come. The German working 
class would feed itself, materially and spir- 



THE WAR AGAINST CZARISM 89 

itually, on the crumbs from the table of vic- 
torious imperialism, while the cause of the So- 
cial Revolution would have received a mortal 
blow. 

That in such circumstances a Russian revolu- 
tion, even if temporarily successful, would be 
an historical miscarriage, needs no further 
proof. 

Consequently, this present battling of the 
nations under the yoke of militarism laid upon 
them by the capitalistic classes contains within 
itself monstrous contrasts which neither the 
War itself nor the governments directing it 
can solve in any way to the interest of future 
historical development. The Social Demo- 
crats could not, and can not now, combine their 
aims with any of the historical possibilities of 
this War, that is, with either the victory of the 
Triple Alliance or the victory of the Entente. 

The German Social Democracy was once 
well aware of this. The Vorwarts in its issue 



90 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

of July 28, discussing the very question of the 
war against Czarism, said : 

"But if it is not possible to localize the 
trouble, if Russia should step into the field? 
What should our attitude toward Czarism 
be then? Herein lies the great difficulty of 
the situation. Has not the moment come 
to strike a death blow at Czarism? If Ger- 
man troops cross the Russian frontier, will 
that not mean the victory of the Russian 
Revolution?" 

And the Vorwarts comes to the following 
conclusion : 

"Are we so sure that it will mean victory 
to the Russian Revolution if German troops 
cross the Russian frontier? It may readily 
bring the collapse of Czarism, but will not 
the German armies fight a revolutionary 
Russia with even greater energy, with a 



THE WAS AGAINST CZAEISM 91 

keener desire for victory, than they do the 
absolutistic Russia?" 

More than this. On August 3, on the eve of 
the historical session of the Reichstag, the Vor- 
warts wrote in an article entitled "The War 
upon Czarism": 

"While the conservative press is accusing 
the strongest party in the Empire of high 
treason, to the rejoicing of other countries, 
there are other elements endeavoring to 
prove to the Social Democracy that the im- 
pending war is really an old Social Demo- 
cratic demand. War against Russia, war 
upon the blood-stained and faithless Czar- 
ism — this last is a recent phrase of the press 
which once kissed the knout — isn't this what 
Social Democracy has been asking for from 
the beginning? . . . 

"These are literally the arguments used 
by one portion of the bourgeois press, in fact 



92 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

the more intelligent portion, and it only goes 
to show what importance is attached to the 
opinion of that part of the German people 
which stands behind the Social Democracy. 
The slogan no longer is 'Russia's sorrow is 
Germany's sorrow.' Now it is 'Down with 
Czarism !' But since the days when the lead- 
ers of the Social Democracy referred to 
[Bebel, Lassalle, Engels, Marx] demanded 
a democratic war against Russia, Russia has 
quite ceased to be the mere palladium of re- 
action. Russia is also the seat of revolution. 
The overthrow of Czarism is now the task of 
all the Russian people, especially the Rus- 
sian proletariat, and it is just the last weeks 
that have shown how vigorously this very 
working class in Russia is attacking the task 
that history has laid upon it. . . . And all 
the nationalistic attempts of the 'True Rus- 
sians' to turn the hatred of the masses away 



THE WAE AGAINST CZAEISM 93 

from Czarism and arouse a reactionary 
hatred against foreign countries, particularly 
Germany, have failed so far. The Russian 
proletariat knows too well that its enemy is 
not beyond the border but within its own 
land. Nothing was more distasteful to these 
nationalistic agitators, the True Russians 
and Pan-Slavists, than the news of the great 
peace demonstration of the German Social 
Democracy. Oh, how they would have re- 
joiced had the contrary been the case, had 
they been able to say to the Russian prole- 
tariat, 'There, you see, the German Social 
Democrats stand at the head of those who 
are inciting the war against Russia!' And 
the Little Father in St. Petersburg would 
also have breathed a sigh of relief and said, 
'That is the news I wanted to hear. Now 
the backbone of my most dangerous enemy, 
the Russian Revolution, is broken. The in- 



94 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

temational solidarity of the proletariat is 
torn. Now I can unchain the beast of na- 
tionalism. I am saved!' " 

Thus wrote the V or warts after Germany 
had already declared war on Russia. 

These words characterize the honest manly 
stand of the proletariat against a belligerent 
jingoism. The Vorwarts clearly understood 
and cleverly stigmatized the base hypocrisy of 
the knout-loving ruling class of Germany, 
which suddenly became conscious of its mission 
to free Russia from Czarism. The Vorwarts 
warned the German working class of the po- 
litical extortion that the bourgeois press would 
practise on their revolutionary conscience. 
"Do not believe these friends of the knout," 
the Vorwarts said to the German proletariat. 
"They are hungry for your souls, and hide their 
imperialistic designs behind liberal-sounding 
phrases. They are deceiving you — you, the 



THE WAE AGAINST CZAEISM 95 

cannon-fodder with souls that they need. If 
they succeed in winning you over, they will 
only be helping Czarism by dealing the Rus- 
sian Revolution a fearful moral blow. And if, 
in spite of this, the Russian Revolution should 
raise its head, these very people will help Czar- 
ism to crush it." 

That is the sense of what the Vorwdrts 
preached to the working class up to the 4th of 
August. 

And exactly three weeks later the same Vor- 
wdrts wrote: 

"Liberation from Muscovitism (?), free- 
dom and independence for Poland and Fin- 
land, free development for the great Russian 
people themselves, dissolution of the unnat- 
ural alliance between two cultural nations 
and Czaristic barbarism — these were the 
aims that inspired the German people and 
made them ready for any sacrifice," 



96 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

and inspired also the German Social Democ- 
racy and its chief organ. 

What happened in those three weeks to cause 
the Vorvo'drts to repudiate its original stand- 
point? 

What happened? Nothing of importance. 
The German armies strangled neutral Bel- 
gium, burned down a number of Belgian towns, 
destroyed Louvain, the inhabitants of which 
had been so criminally audacious as to fire at 
the armed invaders when they themselves wore 
no helmets and waving feathers.* In those 
three weeks the German armies carried death 
and destruction into French territory, and the 
troops of their ally, Austria-Hungary, 
pounded the love of the Hapsburg Monarchy 
into the Serbs on the Save and the Drina. 
These are the facts that apparently convinced 

* "How characteristically Prussian," wrote Marx to Engels, 
"to declare that no man may defend his 'fatherland' except in 
uniform !" 



THE WAE AGAINST CZAEISM 97 

the Vorwarts that the Hohenzollerns were wag- 
ing the war of liberation of the nations. 

Neutral Belgium was crushed, and the Social 
Democrats remained silent. And Richard 
Fischer was sent to Switzerland as special en- 
voy of the Party to explain to the people of a 
neutral country that the violation of Belgian 
neutrality and the ruin of a small nation were 
a perfectly natural phenomenon. Why so 
much excitement? Any other European gov- 
ernment, in Germany's place, would have 
acted in the same way. It was just at this time 
that the German Social Democracy not only 
reconciled itself to the War as a work of real 
or supposed national defense, but even sur- 
rounded the Hohenzollern-Hapsburg armies 
with the halo of an offensive campaign for free- 
dom. What an unprecedented fall for a party 
that for fifty years had taught the German 
working class to look upon the German Gov- 
ernment as the foe of liberty and democracy! 



98 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

In the meantime every day of the War dis- 
closes the danger to Europe that the Marxists 
should have foreseen at once. The chief blows 
of the German government were not aimed at 
the East, but at the West, at Belgium, France 
and England. Even if we accept the improb- 
able premise that nothing but strategic neces- 
sity determined this plan of campaign, the logi- 
cal political outcome of this strategy remains 
with all its consequences, that is, the necessity 
for a full and definite defeat of Belgium, 
France and the English land forces, so that 
Germany's hands might be free to deal with 
Russia. Wasn't it perfectly clear that what 
was at first represented as a temporary meas- 
ure of strategic necessity in order to soothe the 
German Social Democracy, would become an 
end in itself through the force of events ? The 
more stubborn the resistance made by France, 
whose duty it has actually become to defend 
its territory and its independence against the 



THE WAR AGAINST CZARISM 99 

German attack, the more certainly will the 
German armies be held on the Western front; 
and the more exhausted Germany is on the 
Western front, the less strength and inclina- 
tion will remain for her supposedly main task, 
the task with which the Social Democracy cred- 
ited her, the "settling with Russia." And then 
history will witness an "honorable" peace be- 
tween the two most reactionary powers of 
Europe, between Nicholas, to whom fate 
granted cheap victories over the Hapsburg 
Monarchy,* rotten to its core, and William, 
who had his "settling," but with Belgium, not 
with Russia. 

The alliance between Hohenzollern and 
Romanoff — after the exhaustion and degrada- 

* "Russian diplomacy is interested only in such wars," wrote 
Engels in 1890, "as force her allies to bear the chief burden of 
raising troops and suffering invasion, and leave to the Russian 
troops only the work of reserves. Czarism makes war on its 
own account only on decidedly weaker nations, such as Sweden, 
Turkey and Persia." Austria-Hungary must now be placed in 
the same class as Turkey and Persia. 



100 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

tion of the Western nations — will mean a 
period of the darkest reaction in Europe and 
the whole world. 

The German Social Democracy by its pres- 
ent policy smooths the way for this awful 
danger. And the danger will become an actu- 
ality unless the European proletariat interferes 
and enters as a revolutionary factor into the 
plans of the dynasties and the capitalistic gov- 
ernments. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST 

On his return from his diplomatic trip to 
Italy, Dr. Siidekum wrote in the Vorwarts 
that the Italian comrades did not sufficiently 
comprehend the nature of Czarism. We agree 
with Dr. Siidekum that a German can more 
easily understand the nature of Czarism as he 
experiences daily, in his own person, the na- 
ture of Prussian- German absolutism. The two 
"natures" are very closely akin to each other. 

German absolutism represents a feudal- 
monarchical organization, resting upon a 
mighty capitalist foundation, which the devel- 
opment of the last half -century has erected for 
it. The strength of the German army, as we 
have learned to know it anew in its present 

bloody work, consists not alone in the great 

101 



102 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

material and technical resources of the nation, 
and in the intelligence and precision of the 
workman-soldier, who had been drilled in the 
school of industry and his own class organi- 
zations. It has its foundation also in its Junker 
officer caste, with its master class traditions, its 
oppression of those who are below and its sub- 
ordination to those who are above. The Ger- 
man army, like the German state, is a feudal- 
monarchical organization with inexhaustible 
capitalistic resources. The bourgeois scrib- 
blers may chatter all they want about the su- 
premacy of the German, the man of duty, over 
the Frenchman, the man of pleasure; the real 
difference lies not in the racial qualities, but 
in the social and political conditions. The 
standing army, that closed corporation, that 
self-sufficing state within the state, remains, 
despite universal military service, a caste or- 
ganization that in order to thrive must have 



THE WAE AGAINST THE WEST 103 

artificial distinctions of rank and a monarchical 
top to crown the commanding hierarchy. 

In his work, "The New Army," Jaures 
showed that the only army France could have 
is an army of defense built on the plan of arm- 
ing every citizen, that is, a democratic army, a 
militia. The bourgeois French Republic is 
now paying the penalty for having made her 
army a counterpoise to her democratic state 
organization. She created, in Jaures' words, 
"a bastard regime in which antiquated forms 
clashed with newly developing forms and neu- 
tralized each other." This incongruity between 
the standing army and the republican regime is 
the fundamental weakness of the French mili- 
tary system. 

The reverse is true of Germany. Germany's 
barbarian retrograde political system gives her 
a great military supremacy. The German 
bourgeoisie may grumble now and then when 
the pretorian caste spirit of the officers' corps 



104 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

leads to outbreaks like that of Zabern. They 
may make wry faces at the Crown Prince and 
his slogan, "Give it to them ! Give it to them!" 
The German Social Democracy may inveigh 
ever so sharply against the systematic personal 
ill-treatment of the German soldier which has 
caused proportionately double the number of 
suicides in the German barracks of that in any 
other country. But for all that, the fact that 
the German bourgeoisie has absolutely no po- 
litical character and that the German Socialist 
party has failed to inspire the proletariat with 
the revolutionary spirit has enabled the ruling 
class to erect the gigantic structure of militar- 
ism, and so place the efficient and intelligent 
German workmen under the command of the 
Zabern heroes and their slogan, "Give it to 
them!" 

Professor Hans Delbruck seeks the source 
of Germany's military strength in the ancient 



THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST 105 

model of the Teutoburgerwald, and he is per- 
fectly justified. 

"The oldest Germanic system of warfare," 
he writes, "was based on the retinue of 
princes, a body of specially selected warriors, 
and the mass of fighters comprising the en- 
tire nation. This is the system we have to- 
day also. How vastly different are the 
methods of fighting now from those of our 
ancestors in the Teutoburgerwald ! We have 
the technical marvels of modern machine 
guns. We have the wonderful organization 
of immense masses of troops. And yet, our 
military system is at bottom the same. The 
martial spirit is raised to its highest power, 
developed to its utmost in a body which once 
was small but now numbers many thousands, 
a body giving fealty to their War Lord, and 
by him, as by the princes of old, regarded as 
his comrades ; and under their leadership the 



106 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

whole people, educated by them and disci- 
plined by them. Here we have the secret of 
the warlike character of the German nation" 

The French Major, Driant, looks on at the 
German Kaiser in his White Cuirassier's uni- 
form, undoubtedly the most imposing military 
uniform in the world, and republican by con- 
straint that he is, his heart is filled with a lover's 
jealousy. And how the Kaiser spends his time 
"in the midst of his army, that true family of 
the Hohenzollerns !" The Major is fascinated. 
The feudal caste, whose hour of political and 
moral decay had struck long ago, found its 
connection with the nation once more in the fer- 
tile soil of imperialism. Ajid this connection 
with the nation has taken such deep root that 
the prophecies of Major Driant, written sev- 
eral years ago, have actually come true — 
prophecies that until now could only have ap- 
peared as either the poisonous promptings of 



THE WAE AGAINST THE WEST 107 

a secret Bonapartist, or the drivellings of a 
lunatic. 

"The Kaiser," he wrote, "is the Com- 
mander in Chief . . . and behind him stands 
the entire working class of Germany as one 
man. . . . Bebel's Social Democrats are in 
the ranks, their fingers on the trigger, and 
they too think only of the welfare of the 
Fatherland. The ten-billion war indemnity 
that France will have to pay will be a greater 
help to them than the Socialist chimeras on 
which they fed the day before." 

Yes, and now they are writing of this future 
indemnity even in some Social Democratic (!) 
papers, with open rowdy insolence — an indem- 
nity, however, not of ten billions, but of twenty 
or thirty billions. 

Germany's victory over France — a deplor- 
able strategic necessity, according to the Ger- 
man Social Democrats — would mean not only 



108 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

the defeat of France's standing army; it would 
mean primarily the victory of the feudal-mon- 
archical state over the democratic-republican 
state. 

For the ancient race of Hindenburgs, 
Moltkes and Klucks, hereditary specialists in 
mass-murder, are just as indispensable a con- 
dition of German victory as are the 42 centi- 
meter guns, the last word in human technical 
skill. 

The entire capitalist press is already talking 
of the unshakable stability of the German 
Monarchy, strengthened by the war. And 
German professors, the same who proclaimed 
Hindenburg a doctor of All the Sciences, are 
already declaring that political slavery is a 
higher form of social life. 

"The democratic republics, and the so- 
called monarchies that are under subjection 
to a parliamentary regime, and all the other 



THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST 109 

beautiful things that were so extolled — what 
little capacity they have shown to stand the 
storm!" 

These are the things that the German pro- 
fessors are writing now. 

It is shameful and humiliating enough to 
read the expressions of the French Socialists, 
who had proved themselves too weak to break 
the alliance of France with Russia or even to 
prevent the return to three-years' military serv- 
ice, but who, when the War began, neverthe- 
less donned their red trousers and set out to 
free Germany. But we are seized with a feel- 
ing of unspeakable indignation on reading the 
German Socialist party press, which in the lan- 
guage of exalted slaves extols the brave heroic 
caste of hereditary oppressors for their armed 
exploits on French territory. 

On August 15, 1870, when the victorious 
German armies were approaching Paris, En- 



110 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

gels wrote in a letter to Marx, after describing 
the confused condition of the French defense: 

"Nevertheless, a revolutionary govern- 
ment, if it comes soon, need not despair. But 
it must leave Paris to its fate, and continue 
to carry on the war from the south. It is 
then still possible that such a government 
may hold out until arms and ammunition 
are bought and a new army organized with 
which the enemy can be gradually pushed 
back to the frontier. That would be the 
right ending to the war — for both countries 
to demonstrate that they cannot be con- 
quered." 

And yet there are people who shout like 
drunken helots, "On to Paris. " And in doing 
so they have the impudence to invoke the names 
of Marx and Engels. In what measure are 
they superior to the thrice despised Russian lib- 
erals who crawled on their bellies before his 



THE WAB AGAINST THE WEST 111 

Excellency, the military Commander, who in- 
troduced the Russian knout into East Galicia. 
It is cowardly arrogance — this talk of the pure- 
ly "strategic" character of the War on the 
Western front. Who takes any account of it? 
Certainly not the German ruling classes. They 
speak the language of conviction and of main 
force. They call things by their right names. 
They know what they want and they know how 
to fight for it. 

The Social Democrats tell us that the War 
is being waged for the cause of national inde- 
pendence. "That is not true," retorted Herr 
Arthur Dix. 

"Just as the high politics of the last cen- 
tury," wrote Dix, "owed its specially marked 
character to the National Idea, so the politi- 
cal-world events of this century stand under 
the emblem of the Imperialistic Idea. The 
imperalistic idea that is destined to give the 



112 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

impetus, the scope and the goal to the striv- 
ing for power of the great (Der Weltwirt- 
schaftshrieg ', 1914, p. 3). 

"It shows gratifying sagacity," says the 
same Herr Arthur Dix, "on the part of 
those who had charge of the military prepa- 
rations of the War, that the advance of our 
armies against France and Russia in the 
very first stage of the War took place pre- 
cisely where it was most important to keep 
valuable German mineral wealth free from 
foreign invasion, and to occupy such por- 
tions of the enemy's territory as would sup- 
plement our own underground resources" 
(Ibid., p. 38). 

The "strategy," of which the Socialists now 
speak in devout whispers, really begins its ac- 
tivities with the robbery of mineral wealth. 

The Social Democrats tell us that the War 
is a war of defense. But Herr Georg Irmer 
says clearly and distinctly: 



THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST 113 

"People ought not to be talking as though 
the German nation had come too late for ri- 
valry for world economy and world domin- 
ion, — that the world has already been di- 
vided. Has not the earth been divided over 
and over again in all epochs of history?" 
(Los vom englischen Weltjoch, 1914, p. 42.) 

The Socialists try to comfort us by telling 
us that Belgium has only been temporarily 
crushed and that the Germans will soon vacate 
their Belgian quarters. But Herr Arthur Dix, 
who knows very well what he wants, and who 
has the right and the power to want it, writes 
that what England fears most, and expressly 
so, is that Germany should have an outlet to 
the Atlantic Ocean. 

"For this very reason," he continues, "we 
must neither let Belgium go out of our hands,, 
nor must we fail to make sure that the coast line 
from Ostende to the Somme shall not again fall 



114 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

into the hands of any state which may become a 
political vassal of England. We must see to 
it that in some form or other German influence 
is securely established there." 

In the endless battles between Ostende and 
Dunkirk, sacred "strategy" is now carrying 
out this programme of the Berlin stock ex- 
change, also. 

The Socialists tell us that the War between 
France and Germany is merely a brief prelude 
to a lasting alliance between those countries. 
But here, too, Herr Arthur Dix shows Ger- 
many's cards. According to him, "there is but 
one answer: to seek to destroy the English 
world trade, and to deal deadly blows at Eng- 
lish national economy/ 3 

"The aim for the foreign policy of the Ger- 
man Empire for the next decades is clearly 
indicated," Professor Franz von Liszt an- 
nounces. " 'Protection against England,' that 



THE WAB AGAINST THE WEST 115 

must be our slogan" (Ein mitteleuropaischer 
Staatenverbandj 1914, p. 24). 

"We must crush the most treacherous and 
malicious of our foes," cries a third. "We 
must break the tyranny which England ex- 
ercises over the sea with base self-seeking and 
shameless contempt of justice and right." 

The War is directed not against Czarism, 
but primarily against England's supremacy on 
the sea. 

"It may be said," Professor Schiehmann 
confesses, "that no success of ours has given 
us such joy as the defeat of the English at 
Maubeuge and St. Quentin on August 28." 

The German Social Democrats tell us that 
the chief object of the War is the "settlement 
with Russia." But plain, straightforward 
Herr Rudolf Theuden wants to give Galicia to 



116 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

Russia with North Persia thrown in. Then 
Russia "would have got enough to be satisfied 
for many decades to come. We may even make 
her our friend by it." 

"What ought the War to bring us?" asks 
Theuden, and then he answers: 

"The chief payment must be made us by 
France. . . . France must give us Belfort, 
that part of Lorraine which borders on the 
Moselle, and, in case of stubborn resistance, 
that part as well which borders on the Maas. 
If we make the Maas and the Moselle Ger- 
man boundaries, the French will some day 
perhaps wean themselves away from the idea 
of making the Rhine a French boundary." 

The bourgeois politicians and professors tell 
us that England is the chief enemy; that Bel- 
gium and France are the gateway to the Atlan- 
tic Ocean; that the hope of a Russian indem- 
nity is only a Utopian dream, anyway; that 



THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST 117 

Russia would be more useful as friend than as 
foe; that France will have to pay in land 
and in gold — and the Vorwarts exhorts the 
German workers to "hold out until the decisive 
victory is ours." 

And yet the Vorwarts tells us that the War 
is being waged for the independence of the 
German nation, and for the liberation of the 
Russian people. What does this mean? Of 
course we must not look for ideas, logic and 
truth where they do not exist. This is simply 
a case of an ulcer of slavish sentiments burst- 
ing open and foul pus crawling over the pages 
of the workingmen's press. It is clear that the 
oppressed class which proceeds too slowly and 
inertly on its way toward freedom must in the 
final hour drag all its hopes and promises 
through mire and blood, before there arises 
in its soul the pure, unimpeachable voice — the 
voice of revolutionary honor. 



CHAPTER V 

THE WAR OF DEFENSE 

"The thing for us to do now is to avert 
this danger [Russian despotism], and to se- 
cure the culture and the independence of our 
land. Thus we will make good our word, 
and do what we have always said we would. 
In the hour of danger we will not leave our 
Fatherland in the lurch. . . . Guided by 
these principles we vote for the war credits." 

This was the declaration of the German So- 
cial Democratic fraction, read by Haase in the 
Reichstag session of August 4. 

Here only the defense of the fatherland is 
mentioned. Not a word is said of the "liberat- 
ing" mission of this War in behalf of the peo- 
ples of Russia, which was later sung in every 

118 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 119 

key by the Social Democratic press. The logic 
of the Socialist press, however, did not keep 
pace with its patriotism. For while it made 
desperate efforts to represent the War as one 
of pure defense, to secure the safety of Ger- 
many's possessions, it at the same time pictured 
it as a revolutionary offensive war for the lib- 
eration of Russia and of Europe from Czarism. 

We have already shown clearly enough why 
the peoples of Russia had every reason to de- 
cline with thanks the assistance offered them 
at the point of the Hohenzollern bayonets. 
But how about the "defensive" character of 
the War? 

What surprises us even more than what is 
said in the declaration of the Social Democracy 
is what it conceals and leaves unsaid. After 
Hollweg had already announced in the Reichs- 
tag the accomplished violation of the neutral- 
ity of Belgium and Luxemburg as a means of 
attacking France, Haase does not mention this 



120 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

fact in a single word. This silence is so mon- 
strous that one is tempted to read the declara- 
tion a second and a third time. But in vain. 
The declaration is written as though such coun- 
tries as Belgium, France and England had 
never existed on the political map of the Ger- 
man Social Democracy. 

But facts do not cease to be facts simply be- 
cause political parties shut their eyes to them. 
And every member of the International has the 
right to ask this question of Comrade Haase, 
"What portion of the five billions voted by the 
Social Democratic fraction was meant for the 
destruction of Belgium?" It is quite possible 
that in order to protect the German father- 
land from Russian despotism it was inevitable 
that the Belgian fatherland should be crushed. 
But why did the Social Democratic fraction 
keep silent on this point? 

The reason is clear. The English Liberal 
government, in its effort to make the War 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 121 

popular with the masses, made its plea exclu- 
sively on the ground of the necessity of pro- 
tecting the independence of Belgium and the 
integrity of France, but utterly ignored its al- 
liance with Russian Czarism. In like manner, 
and from the same motives, the German Social 
Democracy speaks to the masses only about 
the war against Czarism, but does not mention 
even by name Belgium, France and England. 
All this is of course not exactly flattering to 
the international reputation of Czarism. Yet 
it is quite distressing that the German Social 
Democracy should sacrifice its own good name 
to the call to arms against Czarism. Las- 
salle said that every great political action 
should begin with a statement of things as they 
are. Then why does the defense of the Father- 
land begin with an abashed silence as to things 
as they are? Or did the German Social De- 
mocracy perhaps think that this was not a "big 
political action" ? 



122 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

Anyway, the defense of the Fatherland is a 
very broad and very elastic conception. The 
world catastrophe began with Austria's ulti- 
matum to Serbia. Austria, naturally, was 
guided solely by the need of defending her bor- 
ders from her uneasy neighbor. Austria's prop 
was Germany. And Germany, in turn, as we 
already know, was prompted by the need to 
secure her own state. "It would be senseless 
to believe," writes Ludwig Quessel on this 
point, "that one wall could be torn away from 
this extremely complex structure (Europe) 
without endangering the security of the whole 
edifice." 

Germany opened her "Defensive War" with 
an attack upon Belgium, the violation of Bel- 
gium's neutrality being allegedly only a 
means of breaking through to France along 
the line of least resistance. The military de- 
feat of France also was to appear only as a 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 123 

strategic episode in the defense of the Father- 
land. 

To some German patriots this construction 
of things did not seem quite plausible, and 
they had good grounds for disbelieving it. 
They suspected a motive which squared far 
better with the reality. Russia, entering upon 
a new era of military preparation, would be a 
far greater menace to Germany in two or three 
years than she was then. And France during 
that time would have completely carried out 
her three-year army reform. Is it not clear, 
then, that an intelligent self-defense demanded 
that Germany should not wait for the attack 
of her enemies but should anticipate them by 
two years and take the offensive at once? And 
isn't it clear, too, that such an offensive war, 
deliberately provoked by Germany and Aus- 
tria, is in reality a preventive war of defense? 

Not infrequently these two points of view 



124 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOBLD PEACE 

are combined in a single argument. Granted 
that there is some slight contradiction between 
them. The one declares that Germany did not 
want the War now and that it was forced upon 
her by the Triple Entente, while the other im- 
plies that war was disadvantageous to the En- 
tente now and that for that very reason Ger- 
many had taken the initiative to bring on the 
War at this time. But what if there is this 
contradiction? It is lightly and easily glossed 
over and reconciled in the saving concept of a 
war of defense. 

But the belligerents on the other side dis- 
puted this advantageous position of being on 
the defensive, which Germany sought to as- 
sume, and did it successfully. France could 
not permit the defeat of Russia on the ground 
of her own self-defense. England gave as the 
motive for her interference the immediate dan- 
ger to the British Islands which a strengthen- 
ing of Germany's position at the mouth of the 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 125 

Channel would mean. Finally, Russia, too, 
spoke only of self-defense. It is true that no 
one threatened Russian territory. But na- 
tional possessions, mark you, do not consist 
merely in territory, but in other, intangible, 
factors as well, among them, the influence over 
weaker states. Servia "belongs" in the sphere 
of Russian influence and serves the purpose of 
maintaining the so-called balance of power in 
the Balkans, not only the balance of power be- 
tween the Balkan States but also between Rus- 
sian and Austrian influence. A successful 
Austrian attack on Servia threatened to disturb 
this balance of power in Austria's favor, and 
therefore meant an indirect attack upon Rus- 
sia. Sasonov undoubtedly found his strongest 
argument in Quessel's words: "It would be 
senseless to believe that one wall could be torn 
away from the extremely complex structure 
(Europe) without endangering the security of 
the entire edifice." 



126 BOLSHEVTKI AND WOELD PEACE 

It is superfluous to add that Servia and 
Montenegro, Belgium and Luxemburg, could 
also produce some proofs of the defensive char- 
acter of their policies. Thus, all the countries 
were on the defensive, none was the aggres- 
sor. But if that is so, then what sense is there 
in opposing the claims of defensive and offen- 
sive war to each other? The standards applied 
in such cases differ greatly, and are not fre- 
quently quite incommensurable. 

What is of fundamental importance to us 
Socialists is the question of the historical role 
of the War. Is the War calculated to effec- 
tively promote the productive forces and the 
state organizations, and to accelerate the con- 
centration of the working class forces? Or is 
the reverse true, will it hinder in this? This 
materialistic evaluation of wars stands above 
all formal or external considerations, and in 
its nature has no relation to the question of de- 
fense or aggression. And yet sometimes these 



THE WAS OF DEFENSE 127 

formal expressions about a war designate with 
more or less truth the actual significance of the 
war. When Engels said that the Germans 
were on the defensive in 1870, he had least of 
all the immediate political and diplomatic cir- 
cumstances in mind. The determining fact for 
him was that in that war Germany was righting 
for her right to national unity, which was a 
necessary condition for the economic develop- 
ment of the country and the Socialist consoli- 
dation of the proletariat. In the same sense 
the Christian peoples of the Balkans waged a 
war of defense against Turkey, fighting for 
their right to independent national develop- 
ment against the foreign rule. 

The question of the immediate international 
political conditions leading to a war is inde- 
pendent of the value the war possesses from the 
historico-materialistic point of view. The Ger- 
man war against the Bonapartist Monarchy 
was historically unavoidable. In that war the 



128 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

right of development was on the German side. 
Yet those historical tendencies did not, in them- 
selves, predetermine the question as to which 
party was interested in provoking the war just 
in the year 1870. We know now very well that 
international politics and military considera- 
tions induced Bismarck to take the actual in- 
itiative in the war. It might have happened 
just the other way, however. With greater 
foresight and energy, the government of Na- 
poleon III could have anticipated Bismarck, 
and begun the war a few years earlier. That 
would have radically changed the immediate 
political aspect of events, but it would have 
made no difference in the historic estimate of 
the war. 

Third in order is the factor of diplomacy. 
Diplomacy here has a two-fold task to perform. 
First, it must bring about war at the moment 
most favorable for its own country from the 
international as well as the military standpoint. 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 129 

Second, it must employ methods which throw 
the burden of responsibility for the bloody con- 
flict, in public opinion, on the enemy govern- 
ment. The exposure of diplomatic trickery, 
cheating and knavery is one of the most im- 
portant functions of Socialist political agita- 
tion. But no matter to what extent we suc- 
ceed in this at the crucial juncture, it is clear 
that the net of diplomatic intrigues in them- 
selves signifies nothing either as regards the 
historic role of the war or its real initiators. 
Bismarck's clever manoeuvres forced Napoleon 
III to declare war on Prussia, although the 
actual initiative came from the German side. 

Next follows the purely military aspect. The 
strategic plan of operations can be calculated 
chiefly for defense or attack, regardless of 
which side declared the war and under what 
conditions. Finally, the first tactics followed 
in the carrying out of the strategic plan not in- 



130 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

frequently plays a great part in estimating the 
war as a war of defense or of aggression. 

"It is a good thing," wrote Engels to 
Marx on July 31, 1870, "that the French at- 
tacked first on German soil. If the Germans 
repel the invasion and follow it up by invad- 
ing French territory, then it will certainly 
not produce the same impression as if the 
Germans had marched into France without 
a previous invasion. In this way the war 
remains, on the French side, more Bona- 
partistic." 

Thus we see by the classic example of the 
Franco-Prussian War that the standards for 
judging whether a war is defensive or aggres- 
sive are full of contradictions when two na- 
tions clash. Then how much more so are they 
when it is a clash of several nations. If we 
unroll the tangle from the beginning, we ar- 
rive at the following connection between the 



THE WAS OF DEFENSE 131 

elements of attack and defense. The first t ac- 
tical move of the French should — at least in 
Engels' opinion — make the people feel that the 
responsibility of attack rested with the French. 
And yet the entire strategic plan of the Ger- 
mans had an absolutely aggressive character. 
The diplomatic moves of Bismarck forced Bo- 
naparte to declare war against his will and thus 
appear as the disturber of the peace of Europe, 
while the military-political initiative in the war 
came from the Prussian government. These 
circumstances are by no means of slight impor- 
tance for the historical estimate of the war, but 
they are not at all exhaustive. 

One of the causes of this war was the grow- 
ing ambition of the Germans for national self- 
determination, which conflicted with the dynas- 
tic pretensions of the French Monarchy. But 
this national "war of defense" led to the an- 
nexation of Alsace-Lorraine and so in its sec- 



132 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

ond stage turned into a dynastic war of con- 
quest. 

The correspondence between Marx and En- 
gels shows that they were guided chiefly by his- 
torical considerations in their attitude towards 
the War of 1870. To them, of course, it was 
by no means a matter of indifference as to 
who conducted the war and how it was con- 
ducted. "Who would have thought it pos- 
sible," Marx writes bitterly, "that twenty-two 
years after 1848 a nationalist war in Germany 
could have been given such theoretical expres- 
sion." Yet what was of decisive significance to 
Marx and Engels was the objective conse- 
quences of the war. "If the Prussians triumph, 
it will mean the centralization of the state 
power — useful to the centralization of the Ger- 
man working-class." 

Liebknecht and Bebel, starting with the 
same historical estimate of the war, were di- 
rectly forced to take a political position to- 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 133 

ward it. It was by no means in opposition to 
the views of Marx and Engels, but, on the con- 
trary, with their perfect acquiescence that Lieb- 
knecht and Bebel refused, in the Reichstag, 
to take any responsibility for this War. The 
statement they handed in read: 

"We cannot grant the war appropriations 
that the Reichstag is asked to make because 
that would be a vote of confidence in the 
Prussian government. ... As opponents 
on principle of every dynastic war, as Social 
Republicians and members of the Interna- 
tional Labor Association, which, without dis- 
tinction of nationality, fights all oppressors 
and endeavors to unite all the oppressed in 
one great brotherhood, we cannot declare 
ourselves either directly or indirectly in fa- 
vor of the present war." 

Schweitzer acted differently. He took the 
historical estimate of the war as a direct guide 



134 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

for his tactics — one of the most dangerous of 
fallacies! — and in voting the war credits gave 
a vote of confidence to the policy of Bismarck. 
And this in spite of the fact that it was neces- 
sary, if the centralization of state power aris- 
ing out of the War was to turn out of use to 
the Social Democratic cause, that the working- 
class should from the very beginning oppose 
the dynastic-Junker centralization with their 
own class-centralization filled with revolution- 
ary distrust of the rulers. 

Schweitzer's political attitude invalidated 
the very consequences of the War that had in- 
duced him to give a vote of confidence to the 
makers of the War. 

Forty years later, drawing up the balance 
sheet of his life-work, Bebel wrote: 

"The attitude that Liebknecht and I took 
at the outbreak and during the continuance 
of the war has for years been a subject of 



THE WAR OF DEFENSE 135 

discussion and violent attack, at first even 
in the Party; but only for a short time. 
Then they acknowledged that we had been 
right. I confess that I do not in any way 
regret our attitude, and if at the outbreak of 
the War we had known what we learned 
within the next few years from the official 
and unofficial disclosures, our attitude from 
the very start would have been still harsher. 
We would not merely have abstained, as we 
did, from voting the first war credits, we 
would have voted against them." (Autobi- 
ography J Part II, p. 167.) 

If we compare the Liebknecht-Bebel state- 
ment of 1870 with Haase's declaration in 1914, 
we must conclude that Bebel was mistaken 
when he said, "Then they acknowledged that 
we had been right." For the vote of August 4 
was eminently a condemnation of Bebel's pol- 
icy forty-four years earlier, since in Haase's 



136 BOLSHEVTKI AND WOELD PEACE 

phraseology, Bebel had then left the Father- 
land in the lurch in the hour of danger. 

What political causes and considerations 
have led the party of the German proletariat 
to abandon its glorious traditions? Not a sin- 
gle weighty reason has been given so far. All 
the arguments adduced are full of contradic- 
tions. They are like diplomatic communiques 
which are written to justify an already accom- 
plished act. The leader writer of Die Neue 
Zeit writes — with the blessing of Comrade 
Kautsky — that Germany's position towards 
Czarism is the same as it was towards Bona- 
partism in 1870 ! He even quotes from a letter 
of Engels: "All classes of the German peo- 
ple realized that it was a question, first of all, 
of national existence, and so they fell in line at 
once." For the same reason, we are told, the 
German Social Democracy has fallen into line 
now. It is a question of national existence. 
"Substitute Czarism for Bonapartism, and 



THE WAR OF DEFENSE 137 

Engels' words are true to-day." And yet the 
fact remains, in all its force, that Bebel and 
Liebknecht demonstratively refused to vote 
either money or confidence to the government 
in 1870. Does it not hold just as well, then, 
if we "substitute Czarism for Bonapartism" ? 
To this question no answer has been vouch- 
safed. 

But what did Engels really write in his let- 
ter concerning the tactics of the labor party? 

"It does not seem possible to me that under 
such circumstances a German political party 
can preach total obstruction, and place all sorts 
of minor considerations above the main issue." 
Total obstruction! — But there is a wide gap 
between total obstruction and the total capitu- 
lation of a political party. And it was this gap 
that divided the positions between Bebel and 
Schweitzer in 1870. Marx and Engels were 
with Bebel against Schweitzer. Comrade 
Kautsky might have informed his leader 



138 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

writer, Hermann Wendel, of this fact. And 
it is nothing but defamation of the dead for 
Simplicissimus now to reconcile the shades of 
Bebel and Bismarck in Heaven. If Simplicis- 
simus and Wendel have the right to awaken 
anybody from his sleep in the grave for the en- 
dorsement of the present tactics of the German 
Social Democracy, then it is not Bebel, but 
Schweitzer. It is the shade of Schweitzer that 
now oppresses the political party of the Ger- 
man proletariat. 

But the very analogy between the Franco- 
Prussian War and the present War is super- 
ficial and misleading in the extreme. Let us 
set aside all the international relations. Let us 
forget that the War meant first of all the de- 
struction of Belgium, and that Germany's main 
force was hurled not against Czarism but re- 
publican France. Let us forget that the start- 
ing point of the War was the crushing of Ser- 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 139 

via, and that one of its aims was the strength- 
ening and consolidation of the arch-reactionary 
state, Austria-Hungary. We will not dwell 
on the fact that the attitude of the German 
Social Democracy dealt a hard blow at the 
Russian Revolution, which in the two years 
before the War had again flared up in such a 
tempest. We will close our eyes to all these 
facts, just as the German Social Democracy 
did on August 4th, when it did not see that 
there was a Belgium in the world, a France, 
England, Servia, or Austria-Hungary. We 
will grant only the existence of Germany. 

In 1870 it was quite easy to estimate the his- 
torical significance of the war. "If the Prus- 
sians win, the centralization of state power will 
further the centralization of the German work- 
ing class." And now? What would be the re- 
sult for the German working class of a Prus- 
sian victory now? 

The only territorial expansion which the 



140 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOBLD PEACE 

German working class could welcome, because 
it would complete the national unity, is a union 
of German Austria with Germany. Any other 
expansion of the German fatherland means 
another step towards the transformation of 
Germany from a national state to a state of 
nationalities, and the consequent introduction 
of all those conditions which render more diffi- 
cult the class struggle of the proletariat. 

Ludwig Frank hoped — and he expressed 
this hope in the language of a belated Lassal- 
lian — that later, after a victorious war, he 
would devote himself to the work of the "inter- 
nal building up" of the state. There is no 
doubt that Germany will need this "internal 
building up" after a victory no less than before 
the War. But will a victory make this work 
easier? There is nothing in Germany's histori- 
cal experiences any more than in those of any 
other country to justify such a hope. 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 141 

"We regarded the doings of the rulers of 
Germany [after the victories of 1870] as a 
matter of course," says Bebel in his Autobi- 
ography, "It was merely an illusion of the 
Party Executive to believe that a more lib- 
eral spirit would prevail in the new order. 
And this more liberal regime was to be 
granted by the same man who had till then 
shown himself the greatest enemy, I will not 
say of democratic development, but even of 
every liberal tendency, and who now as vic- 
tor planted the heel of his Cuirassier boot on 
the neck of the new Empire." (Vol. II, p. 
188.) 

There is absolutely no reason to expect dif- 
ferent results now from a victory from above. 
On the contrary. In 1870 Prussian Junker- 
dom had first to adapt itself to the new im- 
perial order. It could not feel secure in 
the saddle all at once. It was eight years after 



142 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

the victory over France that the anti-So- 
cialist laws were passed. In forty-four 
years Prussian Junkerdom has become the 
imperial Junkerdom. And if, after half a cen- 
tury of the most intense class struggle, Junker- 
dom should appear at the head of the victo- 
rious nation, then we need not doubt that it 
would not have felt the need of Ludwig 
Frank's services for the internal building up of 
the state had he returned safe from the fields 
of German victories. 

But far more important than the strength- 
ening of the class position of the rulers is the 
influence a German victory would have upon 
the proletariat itself. The war grew out of im- 
perialistic antagonisms between the capitalist 
states, and the victory of Germany, as stated 
above, can produce only one result — territorial 
acquisitions at the expense of Belgium, France 
and Russia, commercial treaties forced upon 
her enemies, and new colonies. The class strug- 



THE WAE OF DEFENSE 143 

gle of the proletariat would then be placed 
upon the basis of the imperialistic hegemony 
of Germany, the working class would be inter- 
ested in the maintenance and development of 
this hegemony, and revolutionary Socialism 
would for a long time be condemned to the role 
of a propagandist sect. 

Marx was right when in 1870 he foresaw, as 
a result of the German victories, a rapid de- 
velopment for the German labor movement 
under the banner of scientific Socialism. But 
now the international conditions point to the 
very opposite prognosis. Germany's victory 
would mean the taking of the edge off the rev- 
olutionary movement, its theoretic shallowing, 
and the dying out of the Marxist ideas. 



CHAPTER VI 

WHAT HAVE SOCIALISTS TO DO WITH CAPITALIST 
WARS? 

But the German Social Democracy, we shall 
be told, does not want victory. Our answer 
must be in the first place that this is not true. 
What the German Social Democracy wants is 
told by its press. With two or three excep- 
tions Socialist papers daily point out to the 
German workingman that a victory of the Ger- 
man arms is his victory. The capture of Mau- 
beuge, the sinking of three English warships, or 
the fall of Antwerp aroused in the Social Dem- 
ocratic press the same feelings that otherwise 
are excited by the gain of a new election dis- 
trict or a victory in a wage dispute. We must 
not lose sight of the fact that the German labor 
press, the Party press as well as the trade union 

144 



CAPITALIST WARS 145 

papers, is now a powerful mechanism that in 
place of the education of the people's will for 
the class struggle has substituted the education 
of the people's will for military victories. I 
have not in mind the ugly chauvinistic ex- 
cesses of individual organs, but the underlying 
sentiment of the overwhelming majority of the 
Social Democratic papers. The signal for this 
attitude seems to have been given by the vote 
of the fraction on August 4th. 

But the fraction wasn't thinking of a Ger- 
man victory. It made it its task only to avert 
the danger threatening from the outside, to 
defend the Fatherland. That was all. 

And here we come back to the question of 
wars of defense and wars of aggression. The 
German press, including the Social Demo- 
cratic organs, does not cease to repeat that it 
is Germany of all countries that finds itself on 
the defensive in this War. We have already 
discussed the standards for determining the 



146 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

difference between a war of aggression and a 
war of defense. These standards are numer- 
ous and contradictory. Yet in the present case 
they testify unanimously that Germany's mil- 
itary acts cannot possibly be construed as the 
acts of a war of defense. But this has abso- 
lutely no influence upon the tactics of the So- 
cial Democracy. 

From a historical standpoint the new Ger- 
man imperialism is, as we already know, abso- 
lutely aggressive. Urged onward by the fever- 
ish development of the national industry, Ger- 
man imperialism disturbs the old balance of 
power between the states and plays the first 
violin in the race for armaments. 

And from the standpoint of world politics 
the present moment seemed to be most favor- 
able for Germany to deal her rivals a crushing 
bl ow — which however does not lessen the guilt 
of Germany's enemies by one iota. 

The diplomatic view of events leaves no 



CAPITALIST WAES 147 

doubt concerning the leading part that Ger- 
many played in Austria's provocative action 
in Servia. The fact that Czarist diplomacy 
was, as usual, still more disgraceful, does not 
alter the case. 

From the standpoint of strategy the entire 
German campaign was based on a monstrous 
offensive. 

And finally from the standpoint of tactics^ 
the first move of the German army was the 
violation of Belgian neutrality. 

If all this is defense, then what is attack? 
But even if we assume that events as pictured 
in the language of diplomacy admit of other 
interpretations — although the first two pages 
of the White Book are very clear as to this 
meaning — has the revolutionary party of the 
working class no other standards for determin- 
ing its policy than the documents presented by 
a government that has the greatest interest in 
deceiving it? 



148 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

"Bismarck duped the whole world," says 
Bebel, "and knew how to make people be- 
lieve that it was Napoleon who provoked 
the war, while he himself, the peace-loving 
Bismarck, found himself and his policy in 
the position of being attacked. 

"The events preceding the war were so 
misleading that France's complete unpre- 
paredness for the war that she herself de- 
clared was generally overlooked, while in 
Germany, which appeared to be the one at- 
tacked, preparations for war had been com- 
pleted down to the very last wagon-nail, and 
mobilization moved with the precision of 
clockwork." (Autobiography, Vol. Ill, 
pages 167-168.) 

After such an historical precedent one might 
expect more critical caution from the Social 
Democracy. 

It is quite true that Bebel more than once 



CAPITALIST WAES 149 

repeated his assertion that in case of an attack 
on Germany the Social Democracy would de- 
fend its Fatherland. At the convention held at 
Essen, Kautsky answered him: 

"In my opinion we cannot promise posi- 
tively to share the government's war enthusi- 
asm every time we are convinced that the 
country is threatened by attack. Bebel 
thinks we are much further advanced than 
we were in 1870 and that we are now able to 
decide in every instance whether the war 
which threatens is really one of aggression 
or not. I should not like to take this respon- 
sibility upon myself. I should not like to 
undertake to guarantee that we could make 
a correct decision in every instance, that we 
shall always know whether a government is 
deceiving us, or whether it is not actually 
representing the interests of the nation 
against a war of attack. . . . Yesterday it 



150 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

was the German government that took the 
aggressive, to-morrow it will be the French 
government, and we cannot know if the day 
after it may not be the English government. 
The governments are constantly taking 
turns. As a matter of fact what we are con- 
cerned with in case of war is not a national, 
but an international question. For a war 
between great powers will become a world 
war and will affect the whole of Europe, not 
two countries alone. Some day the German 
government might make the German prole- 
tariat believe they were being attacked; the 
French government might do the same with 
its subjects, and then we should have a war 
in which the French and German working 
men would follow their respective govern- 
ments with equal enthusiasm, and murder 
each other and cut each other's throats. 
Such a contingency must be avoided, and it 
will be avoided if we do not adopt the cri- 



CAPITALIST WAES 151 

terion of the aggressive or defensive war, 
but that of the interests of the proletariat, 
which at the same time are international in- 
terests. . . . Fortunately, it is a miscon- 
ception to assume that the German Social 
Democracy in case of war wanted to judge 
by national and not by international consid- 
erations, and felt itself to be first a German 
and then a proletariat party." 

With splendid clearness Kautsky in this 
speech reveals the terrible dangers — now a still 
more terrible actuality — that are latent in the 
endeavor to make the position of the Social 
Democracy dependent upon an indefinite and 
contradictory formal estimate of whether a war 
is one of defense or one of aggression. Bebel 
in his reply said nothing of importance; and 
his point of view seemed quite inexplicable, 
especially after his own experiences of the year 
1870. 



152 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

Nevertheless, in spite of its theoretical in- 
adequacy, Bebel's position had a quite definite 
political meaning. Those imperialistic ten- 
dencies which the danger of war begat excluded 
the possibility for the Social Democracy's ex- 
pecting salvation from the victory of either of 
the warring parties. For that very reason its 
entire attention was directed to the preventing 
of war, and the principal task was to keep the 
governments worried about the results of a 
war. 

"The Social Democracy," said Bebel, "will 
oppose any government which takes the in- 
itiative in war." He meant this as a threat 
to William II. 's government. "Don't reckon 
upon us if some day you decide to utilize your 
cannon and your battleships." Then he turned 
to Petrograd and London: "They had better 
take care not to attack Germany in a miscal- 
culation of weakness from within on account of 



CAPITALIST WAES 153 

the obstructionist policies of the powerful Ger- 
man Social Democracy." 

Without being a political doctrine, Bebel's 
conception was a political threat, and a threat 
directed simultaneously at two fronts, the in- 
ternal front and the foreign front. His one 
obstinate answer to all historical and logical 
objections was : "We'll find the way to expose 
any government that takes the first step to- 
wards war. We are clever enough for that." 

This threatening attitude of not only the 
German Social Democracy but also of the In- 
ternational Party was not without results. 
The various governments actually did make 
every effort to postpone the outbreak of the 
War. But that is not all. The rulers and the 
diplomats were doubly attentive now to adapt- 
ing their moves to the pacifist psychology of 
the masses. They whispered with the Socialist 
leaders, nosed about in the office of the Inter- 
national, and so created a sentiment which 



154 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

made it possible for Jaures and Haase to de- 
clare at Brussels, a few days before the out- 
break of the War, that their particular govern- 
ments had no other object than the preserva- 
tion of peace. And when the storm broke 
loose, the Social Democracy of every country 
looked for the guilty party — on the other side 
of the border. Bebel's utterance, which had 
played a definite part as a threat, lost all mean- 
ing the instant the first shots were fired at the 
frontiers. That terrible thing took place which 
Kautsky had prophesied. 

What at first glance appears the most sur- 
prising thing about it all is, that the Social 
Democracy had not really felt the need for a 
political criterion. In the catastrophe that has 
occurred to the International the arguments 
have been notable for their superficiality. They 
contradicted each other, shifted ground, and 
were of only secondary significance — the gist 
of the matter being that the fatherland must be 



CAPITALIST WAES 155 

defended. Apart from considerations of the 
historical outcome of the War, apart from con- 
siderations of democracy and the class strug- 
gle, the fatherland that has come down to us 
historically must be defended. And defended 
not because our government wanted peace and 
was "perfidiously attacked," as the interna- 
tional penny-a-liners put it, but because apart 
from the conditions or the ways in which it was 
provoked, apart from who was right and who 
was wrong, war, once it breaks out, subjects 
every belligerent to the danger of invasion and 
conquest. Theoretical, political, diplomatic 
and military considerations fall into ruins as in 
an earthquake, a conflagration or a flood. The 
government with its army is elevated to the po- 
sition of the one power that can protect and 
save its people. The large masses of the peo- 
ple in actuality return to a pre-political condi- 
tion. This feeling of the masses, this elemental 
reflex of the catastrophe, need not be criticized 



156 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

in so far as it is only a temporary feeling. But 
it is quite a different matter in the case of the 
attitude of the Social Democracy, the respon- 
sible political representative of the masses. 
The political organizations of the possessing 
classes and especially the power of the govern- 
ment itself did not simply float with the stream. 
They instantly set to work most intensively 
and in very varied ways to heighten this unpo- 
litical sentiment and to unite the masses 
around the army and the government. The 
Social Democracy not only did not become 
equally active in the opposite direction, but 
from the very first moment surrendered to the 
policy of the government and to the elemental 
feeling of the masses. And instead of arming 
these masses with the weapons of criticism and 
distrust, if only passive criticism and distrust, 
it itself by its whole attitude hastened the peo- 
ple along the road to this pre-political condi- 
tion. It renounced its traditions and political 



CAPITALIST WAES 157 

pledges of fifty years with a conspicuous read- 
iness that was least of all calculated to inspire 
the rulers with respect. 

Bethmann-Hollweg announced that the 
German government was in absolute agree- 
ment with the German people, and after the 
avowal of the Vorwarts, in view of the position 
taken by the Social Democracy, he had a per- 
fect right to say so. But he had still another 
right. If conditions had not induced him to 
postpone political polemics to a more favorable 
moment, he might have said at the Reichstag 
session of August 4th, addressing the repre- 
sentatives of the Socialist proletariat: "To- 
day you agree with us in recognizing the dan- 
ger threatening our Fatherland, and you join 
us in trying to avert the danger by arms. But 
this danger has not grown up since yesterday. 
You must previously have known of the ex- 
istence and the tendencies of Czarism, and you 
knew that we had other enemies besides. So 



158 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

by what right did you attack us when we built 
up our army and our navy? By what right 
did you refuse to vote for military appropria- 
tions year after year? Was it by the right of 
treason or the right of blindness? If in spite 
of you we had not built up our army, we should 
now be helpless in the face of this Russian 
menace that has brought you to your senses, 
too. No appropriations granted now could 
enable us to make up for what we would have 
lost. We should now be without arms, without 
cannons, without fortifications. Your voting 
to-day in favor of the war credit of five billion 
is an admission that your annual refusal of the 
budget was only an empty demonstration, and, 
worse than that, was political demagogy. For 
as soon as you came up for a serious historical 
examination, you denied your entire past!" 

That is what the German Chancellor could 
have said, and this time his speech would have 



CAPITALIST WAES 159 

carried conviction. And what could Haase 
have replied? 

"We never took a stand for Germany's dis- 
armament in the face of dangers from without. 
Such peace rubbish was never in our thoughts. 
As long as international contradictions create 
out of themselves the danger of war, we want 
Germany to be safe against foreign invasion 
and servitude. What we are trying for is a 
military organization which cannot — as can an 
artificially trained organization — be made to 
serve for class exploitation at home and for im- 
perialistic adventures abroad, but will be invin- 
cible in national defense. We want a militia. 
We cannot trust you with the work of national 
defense. You have made the army a school of 
reactionary training. You have drilled your 
corps of officers in the hatred of the most im- 
portant class of modern society, the proletariat. 
You are capable of risking millions of lives, 
not for the real interests of the people, but for 



160 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

the selfish interests of the ruling minority, 
which you veil with the names of national ideals 
and state prestige. We do not trust you, and 
that is why we have declared year after year, 
'Not a single man or a single penny for this 
class government!' " 

"But five billions!" voices from both the 
right and the left might interrupt. 

"Unfortunately we are now left no choice. 
We have no army except the one created by the 
present masters of Germany, and the enemy 
stands without our gates. We cannot on the 
instant replace William II.'s army by a peo- 
ple's militia, and once this is so, we cannot re- 
fuse food, clothing and materials of war to the 
army that is defending us, no matter how it 
may be constituted. We are neither repudi- 
ating our past nor renouncing our future. We 
are forced to vote for the war credits." 

That would have been about the most con- 
vincing thing that Haase could have said. 



CAPITALIST WAES 161 

Yet, even though such considerations might 
give an explanation of why the Socialist work- 
ers as citizens did not obstruct the military 
organization, but simply fulfilled the duty of 
citizenship forced upon them by circumstances, 
we should still be waiting in vain for an answer 
to the principal question: Why did the Social 
Democracy, as the political organization of a 
class that has been denied a share in the gov- 
ernment, as the implacable enemy of bourgeois 
society, as the republican party, as a branch of 
the International — why did it take upon itself 
the responsibility for acts undertaken by its 
irreconcilable class enemies? 

If it is impossible for us immediately to re- 
place the Hohenzollern army with a militia, 
that does not mean that we must now take upon 
ourselves the responsibility for the doings of 
that army. If in times of peaceful normal 
state-housekeeping we wage war against the 
monarchy, the bourgeoisie and militarism, and 



162 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

are under obligations to the masses to carry on 
that war with the whole weight of our author- 
ity, then we commit the greatest crime against 
our future when we put this authority at the 
disposal of the monarchy, the bourgeoisie and 
militarism at the very moment when these 
break out into the terrible, anti-social and bar- 
baric methods of war. 

Neither the nation nor the state can escape 
the obligation of defense. But when we refuse 
the rulers our confidence we by no means rob 
the bourgeois state of its weapons or its means 
of defense and even of attack — as long as we 
are not strong enough to wrest its power from 
its hands. In war as in peace, we are a party 
of opposition, not a party of power. In that 
way we can also most surely serve that part of 
our task which war outlines so sharply, the 
work of national independence. The Social 
Democracy cannot let the fate of any nation, 
whether its own or another nation, depend upon 



I 

CAPITALIST WAES 163 

military successes. In throwing upon the cap- 
italist state the responsibility for the method 
by which it protects its independence, that is, 
the violation of the independence of other 
states, the Social Democracy lays the corner- 
stone of true national independence in the con- 
sciousness of the masses of all nations. By 
preserving and developing the international 
solidarity of the workers, we secure the inde- 
pendence of the nation — and make it indepen- 
dent of the calibre of cannons. 

If Czarism is a danger to Germany's inde- 
pendence, there is only one way that promises 
success in warding off this danger, and that 
way lies with us — the solidarity of the working 
masses of Germany and Russia. But such soli- 
darity would undermine the policy that Wil- 
liam II. explained in saying that the entire 
German people stood behind him. What 
should we Russian Socialists say to the Russian 
workingmen in face of the fact that the bullets 



164 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

the German workers are shooting at them bear 
the political and moral seal of the German So- 
cial Democracy? "We cannot make our policy 
for Russia, we make it for Germany," was the 
answer given me by one of the most respected 
functionaries of the German party when I put 
this question to him. And at that moment I 
felt with particularly painful clearness what a 
blow had been struck at the International from 
within. 

The situation, it is plain, is not improved if 
the Socialist parties of both warring countries 
throw in their fate with the fate of their gov- 
ernments, as in Germany and France. No out- 
side power, no confiscation or destruction of 
Socialist property, no arrests and imprison- 
ments could have dealt such a blow to the In- 
ternational as it struck itself with its own hands 
in surrendering to the Moloch of state just when 
he began to talk in terms of blood and iron. 



CAPITALIST WAES 165 

In his speech at the convention at Essen 
Kautsky drew a terrifying picture of brother 
rising against brother in the name of a "war of 
defense" — as an argument, by no means as an 
actual possibility. Now that this picture has 
become a bloody actuality, Kautsky endeavors 
to reconcile us to it. He beholds no collapse of 
the International. 

"The difference between the German and 
the French Socialists is not to be found in 
their standards of judgment, nor in their 
fundamental point of view, but merely in the 
difference of their interpretation of the pres- 
ent situation, which, in its turn, is condi- 
tioned by the difference in their geographical 
position [!]. Therefore, this difference can 
scarcely be overcome while the war lasts. 
Nevertheless it is not a difference of princi- 
ple, but one arising out of a particular situ- 
ation, and so it need not last after that situa- 



166 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

tion has ceased to exist." (Neue Zeit, 337, 
p. 3.) 

When Guesde and Sembat appear as aides 
to Poincare, Delcasse and Briand, and as op- 
ponents to Bethmann-Hollweg; when the 
French and German workingmen cut each 
other's throats and are not doing so as enforced 
citizens of the bourgeois republic and the Ho- 
henzollern Monarchy, but as Socialists per- 
forming their duty under the spiritual leader- 
ship of their parties, this is not a collapse of the 
International. The "standard of judgment" 
is one and the same for the German Socialist 
cutting a Frenchman's throat as for the 
French Socialist cutting a German's throat. 
If Ludwig Frank takes up his gun, not to pro- 
claim the "difference of principle" to the 
French Socialists, but to shoot them in all 
agreement of principle; and if Ludwig Frank 
should himself fall by a French bullet — fired 



CAPITALIST WAES 167 

possibly by a comrade — that is no detriment to 
"standards" they have in common. It is mere- 
ly a consequence of the "difference in their 
geographical position." Truly, it is bitter to 
read such lines, but doubly bitter when they 
come from Kautsky's pen. 

The International was opposed to the war. 

"If, in spite of the efforts of the Social 
Democracy, we should have war," says 
Kautsky, "then every nation must save its 
skin as best it can. This means for the Social 
Democracy of every country the same right 
and the same duty to participate in its coun- 
try's defense, and none of them may make of 
this a cause for casting reproaches [ !] at each 
other." (Neue Zeit, 337, p. 7. ) 

Of such sort is this common standard to save 
one's own skin, to break one another's skulls 
in self-defense, and not to "reproach" one an- 
other for doing so. 



168 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

But will the question be answered by the 
agreement in the standard of judgment? Will 
it not rather be answered by the quality of this 
common standard of judgment? Among 
Bethmann-Hollweg, Sasonov, Grey and Del- 
casse you also find agreement in their stand- 
ards. Nor is there any difference of principle 
between them either. They least of all have 
any right to cast reproaches at each other. 
Their conduct simply springs from "a differ- 
ence in their geographical position." Had 
Bethmann-Hollweg been an English minister, 
he would have acted exactly as did Sir Edward 
Grey. Their standards are as like each other 
as their cannon, which differ in nothing but 
their calibre. But the question for us is, can 
we adopt their standards for our own? 

"Fortunately, it is a misconception to as- 
sume that the German Social Democracy in 
case of war wanted to judge by national and 



CAPITALIST WARS 169 

not by international considerations, and felt 
itself to be first a German and then a prole- 
tariat party." 

So said Kautsky in Essen. And now when 
the national point of view has taken hold of all 
the workingmen's parties of the International 
in place of the international point of view that 
they held in common, Kautsky not only recon- 
ciles himself to this "misconception," but even 
tries to find in it agreement of standards and 
a guarantee of the rebirth of the International. 

"In every national state the working class 
must also devote its entire energy to keeping 
intact the independence and the integrity of 
the national territory. This is an essential of 
democracy, that basis necessary to the strug- 
gle and the final victory of the proletariat." 
(NeueZeit, 337,$. 4.) 

But if this is the case, how about the Aus- 
trian Social Democracy? Must h% too, devote 



170 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

its entire energy to the preservation of the non- 
national and anti-national Austro-Hungarian 
Monarchy? And the German Social Democ- 
racy? By amalgamating itself politically with 
the German army, it not only helps to preserve 
the Austro-Hungarian national chaos, but also 
facilitates the destruction of Germany's na- 
tional unity. National unity is endangered not 
only by defeat but also by victory. 

From the standpoint of the European pro- 
letariat it is equally harmful whether a slice 
of French territory is gobbled up by Germany, 
or whether France gobbles up a slice of Ger- 
man territory. Moreover the preservation of 
the European status quo is not a thing at all for 
our platform. The political map of Europe 
has been drawn by the point of the bayonet, 
at every frontier passing over the living bodies 
of the nations. If the Social Democracy as- 
sists its national (or anti-national) govern- 
ments with all its energy, it is again leaving it 



CAPITALIST WAES 171 

to the power and intelligence of the bayonet to 
correct the map of Europe. And in tearing 
the International to pieces, the Social Democ- 
racy destroys the one power that is capable of 
setting up a programme of national independ- 
ence and democracy in opposition to the ac- 
tivity of the bayonet, and of carrying out this 
programme in a greater or less degree, quite 
independently of which of the national bayo- 
nets is crowned with victory. 

The experience of old is confirmed once 
again. If the Social Democracy sets national 
duties above its class duties, it commits the 
greatest crime not only against Socialism, but 
also against the interest of the nation as rightly 
and broadly understood. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL 

At their Convention in Paris two weeks be- 
fore the outbreak of the catastrophe, the 
French Socialists insisted on pledging all 
branches of the International to revolutionary 
action in case of a mobilization. They were 
thinking chiefly of the German Social Democ- 
racy. The radicalism of the French Socialists 
in matters of foreign policy was rooted not so 
much in international as national interests. 
The events of the War have now definitely con- 
firmed what was clear to many then. What 
the French Socialist Party desired from the 
sister party in Germany was a certain guaran- 
tee for the inviolability of France. They be- 
lieved that only by thus insuring themselves 
with the German proletariat could they finally 

172 



COLLAPSE OF INTERNATIONAL 173 

free their own hands for a decisive conflict with 
national militarism. 

The German Social Democracy, for their 
part, flatly refused to make any such pledge. 
Behel showed that if the Socialist parties signed 
the French resolution, that would not neces- 
sarily enable them to keep their pledge when 
the decisive moment came. Now there is little 
room for doubt that Bebel was right. As 
events have repeatedly proved, a period of 
mobilization almost completely cripples the So- 
cialist Party, or at least precludes the possi- 
bility of decisive moves. Once mobilization is 
declared, the Social Democracy finds itself face 
to face with the concentrated power of the 
Government, which is supported by a powerful 
military apparatus that is ready to crush all 
obstacles in its path and has the unqualified 
co-operation of all bourgeois parties and insti- 
tutions. 

And of no less importance is the fact that 



174 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

mobilization wakes up and brings to their feet 
those elements of the people whose social sig- 
nificance is slight and who play little or no po- 
litical part in times of peace. Hundreds of 
thousands, nay millions of petty hand-workers, 
of hobo-proletarians (the riff-raff of the work- 
ers), of small farmers and agricultural labor- 
ers are drawn into the ranks of the army and 
put into a uniform, in which each one of these 
men stands for just as much as the class-con- 
scious workingman. They and their families 
are forcibly torn from their dull unthinking in- 
difference and given an interest in the fate of 
their country. Mobilization and the declara- 
tion of war awaken fresh expectations in these 
circles whom our agitation practically does not 
reach and whom, under ordinary circumstances, 
it will never enlist. Confused hopes of a 
change in present conditions, of a change for 
the better, fill the hearts of these masses 
dragged out of the apathy of misery and servi- 



COLLAPSE OF INTEBNATIONAL 175 

tude. The same thing happens as at the begin- 
ning of a revolution, but with one all-impor- 
tant difference. A revolution links these newly 
aroused elements with the revolutionary class, 
but war links them — with the government and 
the army! In the one case all the unsatisfied 
needs, all the accumulated suffering, all the 
hopes and longings find their expression in 
revolutionary enthusiasm; in the other case 
these same social emotions temporarily take 
the form of patriotic intoxication. Wide 
circles of the working class, even among those 
touched with Socialism, are carried along in 
the same current. The advance guard of the 
Social Democracy feels it is in the minority; 
its organizations, in order to complete the or- 
ganization of the army, are wrecked. Under 
such conditions there can be no thought of a 
revolutionary move on the part of the Party. 
And all this is quite independent of whether 
the people look upon a particular war with 



176 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

favor or disfavor. In spite of the colonial 
character of the Russo-Japanese war and 
its unpopularity in Russia, the first half 
year of it nearly smothered the revolutionary 
movement. Consequently it is quite clear that, 
with the best intentions in the world, the So- 
cialist parties cannot pledge themselves to ob- 
structionist action at the time of mobilization, 
at a time, that is, when Socialism is more than 
ever politically isolated. 

And therefore there is nothing particularly 
unexpected or discouraging in the fact that the 
working-class parties did not oppose military 
mobilization with their own revolutionary mo- 
bilization. Had the Socialists limited them- 
selves to expressing condemnation of the pres- 
ent war, had they declined all responsibility 
for it and refused the vote of confidence in 
their governments as well as the vote for the 
war credits, they would have done their duty at 
the time. They would have taken up a posi- 



COLLAPSE OF INTERNATIONAL 177 

tion of waiting, the oppositional character of 
which would have been perfectly clear to the 
government as well as to the people. Further 
action would have been determined by the 
march of events and by those changes which 
the events of a war must produce on the peo- 
ple's consciousness. The ties binding the In- 
ternational together would have been pre- 
served, the banner of Socialism would have 
been unstained. Although weakened for the 
moment, the Social Democracy would have 
preserved a free hand for a decisive interfer- 
ence in affairs as soon as the change in the 
feelings of the working masses came about. 
And it is safe to assert that whatever influence 
the Social Democracy might have lost by such 
an attitude at the beginning of the war, would 
have been won several times over once the in- 
evitable turn in public sentiment had come 
about. 

But if this did not happen, if the signal for 



178 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

war mobilization was also the signal for the fall 
of the International, if the national labor par- 
ties fell in line with their governments and the 
armies without a single protest, then there must 
be deep causes for it common to the entire In- 
ternational. It would be futile to seek these 
causes in the mistakes of individuals, in the 
narrowness of leaders and party committees. 
They must be sought in the conditions of the 
epoch in which the Socialist International first 
came into being and developed. Not that the 
unreliability of the leaders or the bewildered 
incompetence of the Executive Committees 
should ever be justified. By no means. But 
these are not fundamental factors. These must 
be sought in the historical conditions of an en- 
tire epoch. For it is not a question — and we 
must be very straightforward with ourselves 
about this — of any particular mistake, not of 
any opportunist steps, not of any awkward 
statements in the various parliaments, not of 



COLLAPSE OF INTERNATIONAL 179 

the vote for the budget cast by the Social Dem- 
ocrats of the Grand Duchy of Baden, not of 
individual experiments of French ministerial- 
ism, not of the making or unmaking of this or 
that Socialist's career. It is nothing less than 
the complete failure of the International in the 
most responsible historical epoch, for which all 
the previous achievements of Socialism can be 
considered merely as a preparation. 

A review of historical events will reveal a 
number of facts and symptoms that should 
have aroused disquiet as to the depth and solid- 
ity of Internationalism in the labor movement. 

I am not referring to the Austrian Social 
Democracy. In vain did the Russian and Ser- 
vian Socialists look for clippings from articles 
on world politics in the Wiener Arbeiter Zei- 
tung that they could use for Russian and Ser- 
vian workingmen without having to blush for 
the International. One of the most striking 
tendencies of this journal always was the de- 



180 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOKLD PEACE 

fense of Austro-German imperialism not only 
against the outside enemy but also against the 
internal enemy — and the Vorwarts was one of 
the internal enemies. There is no irony in say- 
ing that in the present crisis of the Interna- 
tional the Wiener Arbeit er Zeitung remained 
truest to its past. 

French Socialism reveals two extremes — an 
ardent patriotism, on the one hand, not free 
from enmity of Germany; on the other hand, 
the most vivid anti-patriotism of the Herve 
type, which, as experience teaches, readily 
turns into the very opposite. 

As for England, Hyndman's Tory-tinged 
patriotism, supplementing his sectarian radi- 
calism, has often caused the International po- 
litical difficulties. 

It was in a far less degree that nationalistic 
symptoms could be detected in the German So- 
cial Democracy. To be sure, the opportunism 
of the South Germans grew up out of the soil 



COLLAPSE OF INTEENATIONAL 181 

of particularism, which was German national- 
ism in octavo form. But the South Germans 
were rightly considered the politically unim- 
portant rearguard of the Party. Rebel's 
promise to shoulder his gun in case of danger 
did not meet with a single-hearted reception. 
And when Noske repeated Bebel's expression, 
he was sharply attacked in the Party press. 
On the whole the German Social Democracy 
adhered more strictly to the line of internation- 
alism than any other of the old Socialist par- 
ties. But for that very reason it made the 
sharpest break with its past. To judge by the 
formal announcements of the Party and the 
articles in the Socialist press, there is no con- 
nection between the Yesterday and To-day of 
German Socialism. 

But it is clear that such a catastrophe could 
not have occurred had not the conditions for it 
been prepared in previous times. The fact that 
two young parties, the Russian and the Ser- 



182 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

vian, remained true to their international 
duties is by no means a confirmation of the 
Philistine philosophy, according to which loy- 
alty to principle is a natural expression of im- 
maturity. Yet this fact leads us to seek the 
causes of the collapse of the Second Interna- 
tional in the very conditions of its development 
that least influenced its younger members. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM 

The Communist Manifesto, written in 1847, 
closes with the words: "Workingmen of all 
countries, unite !" But this battle cry came too 
early to become a living actuality at once. The 
historical order of the day just then was the 
middle class revolution of 1848. And in this 
revolution the part that fell to the authors of 
the Manifesto themselves was not that of lead- 
ers of an international proletariat, but of fight- 
ers on the extreme left of the national Democ- 
racy. 

The Revolution of 1848 did not solve a sin- 
gle one of the national problems ; it merely re- 
vealed them. The counter-revolution, along 
with the great industrial development that then 
took place, broke off the thread of the revolu- 

m 



184 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

tionary movement. Another century of peace 
went by until recently the antagonisms that 
had not been removed by the Revolution de- 
manded the intervention of the sword. This 
time it was not the sword of the Revolution, 
fallen from the hands of the middle class, but 
the militaristic sword of war drawn from a 
dynastic scabbard. The wars of 1859, 1864, 
1866, and 1870 created a new Italy and a new 
Germany. The feudal caste fulfilled, in their 
own way, the heritage of the Revolution of 
1848. The political bankruptcy of the middle 
class, which expressed itself in this historic in- 
terchange of roles, became a direct stimulus to 
an independent proletarian movement based 
on the rapid development of capitalism. 

In 1863 Lassalle founded the first political 
labor union in Germany. In 1864 the first In- 
ternational was formed in London under the 
guidance of Karl Marx. The closing watch- 
word of the Manifesto was taken up and used 



SOCIALIST OPPOBTUNISM 185 

in the first circular issued by the International 
Association of Workingmen. It is most char- 
acteristic for the tendencies of the modern La- 
bor Movement that its first organization had 
an international character. Nevertheless this 
organization was an anticipation of the future 
needs of the movement rather than a real steer- 
ing instrument in the class-struggle. There 
was still a wide gulf between the ultimate goal 
of the International, the communistic revolu- 
tion, and its immediate activities, which took 
the form mainly of international co-operation 
in the chaotic strike -movements of the laborers 
in various countries. Even the founders of the 
International hoped that the revolutionary 
march of events would very soon overcome the 
contradiction between ideology and practice. 
While the General Council was giving money 
to aid groups of strikers in England and on the 
Continent, it was at the same time making 
classic attempts to harmonize the conduct of 



186 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

the workers in all countries in the field of world 
politics. 

But these endeavors did not as yet have a 
sufficient material foundation. The activity 
of the First International coincided with that 
period of wars which opened the way for capi- 
talistic development in Europe and North 
America. In spite of its doctrinal and educa- 
tional importance, the attempts of the Interna- 
tional to mingle in world politics must all the 
more clearly have shown the advanced work- 
ingmen of all countries their impotence as 
against the national class state. The Paris 
Commune, flaring up out of the war, was the 
culmination of the First International. Just 
as the Communist Manifesto was the theoreti- 
cal anticipation of the modern labor movement, 
and the First International was the practical 
anticipation of the labor associations of the 
world, so the Paris Commune was the revolu- 



SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM 187 

tionary anticipation of the dictatorship of the 
proletariat. 

But only an anticipation, nothing more. 
And for that very reason it was clear that it is 
impossible for the proletariat to overthrow the 
machinery of state and reconstruct society by 
nothing but revolutionary improvisations. 
National states that emerged from the 
wars created the one real foundation for this 
historical work, the national foundation. 
Therefore, the proletariat must go through the 
school of self-education. 

The First International fulfilled its mission 
of a nursery for the National Socialist Par- 
ties. After the Franco-Prussian War and the 
Paris Commune, the International dragged 
along a moribund existence for a few years 
more and in 1872 was transplanted to America, 
to which various religious, social and other ex- 
periments had often wandered before, to die 
there. 



188 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

Then began the period of prodigious capital- 
istic development, on the foundation of the na- 
tional state. For the Labor Movement this 
was the period of the gradual gathering of 
strength, of the development of organization, 
and of political possibilism. 

In England the stormy period of Chartism, 
that revolutionary awakening of the English 
proletariat, had completely exhausted itself ten 
years before the birth of the First Interna- 
tional. The repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) 
and the subsequent industrial prosperity that 
made England the workshop of the world; the 
establishment of the ten-hour working day 
(1847), the increase of emigration from Ire- 
land to America, and the enfranchisement of 
the workers in the cities (1867), all these cir- 
cumstances, which considerably improved the 
lot of the upper strata of the proletariat, led 
the class movement in England into the peace- 



SOCIALIST OPPOBTUNISM 189 

ful waters of trade unionism and its supple- 
mental liberal labor policies. 

The period of possibilism, that is, of the con- 
scious, systematic adaptation to the economic, 
legal, and state forms of national capitalism 
began for the English proletariat, the oldest 
of the brothers, even before the birth of the 
International, and twenty years earlier than 
for the continental proletariat. If nevertheless 
the big English unions joined the Interna- 
tional at first, it was only because it afforded 
them protection against the importation of 
strike breakers in wage disputes. 

The French labor movement recovered but 
slowly from the loss of blood in the Commune, 
on the soil of a retarded industrial growth, and 
in a nationalistic atmosphere of the most nox- 
ious greed for "revenge." Wavering between 
an anarchistic "denial" of the state and a vul- 
gar-democratic capitulation to it, the French 
proletarian movement developed by adapta- 



190 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

tion to the social and political framework of 
the bourgeois republic. 

As Marx had already foreseen in 1870, the 
center of gravity of the Socialist movement 
shifted to Germany. 

After the Franco-Prussian War, united 
Germany entered upon an era similar to the 
one England had passed through in the twenty 
years previous: an era of capitalistic prosper- 
ity, of democratic suffrage, of a higher stand- 
ard of living for the upper strata of the pro- 
letariat. 

Theoretically the German labor movement 
marched under the banner of Marxism. Still 
in its dependence on the conditions of the 
period, Marxism became for the German pro- 
letariat not the algebraic formula of the revo- 
lution that it was at the beginning, but the 
theoretic method for adaptation to a national- 
capitalistic state crowned with the Prussian 
helmet. Capitalism, which had achieved a tern- 



SOCIALIST OPPOKTUNISM 191 

porary equilibrium, continually revolutionized 
the economic foundation of national life. To 
preserve the power that had resulted from the 
Franco-Prussian War, it was necessary to in- 
crease the standing army. The middle class 
had ceded all its political positions to the 
feudal monarchy, but had intrenched itself all 
the more energetically in its economic positions 
under the protection of the militaristic police 
state. The main currents of the last period, 
covering forty-five years, are: victorious capi- 
talism, militarism erected on a capitalist foun- 
dation, a political reaction resulting from the 
intergrowth of feudal and capitalist classes — a 
revolutionizing of the economic life, and a com- 
plete abandonment of revolutionary methods 
and traditions in political life. The entire ac- 
tivity of the German Social Democracy was 
directed towards the awakening of the back- 
ward workers, through a systematic fight for 
their most immediate needs — the gathering of 



192 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

strength, the increase of membership, the filling 
of the treasury, the development of the press, 
the conquest of all the positions that presented 
themselves, their utilization and expansion. 
This was the great historical work of the awak- 
ening and educating of the "unhistorical" 
class. 

The great centralized trade unions of Ger- 
many developed in direct dependence upon the 
development of national industry, adapting 
themselves to its successes in the home and the 
foreign markets, and controlling the prices of 
raw materials and manufactured products. 
Localized in political districts to adapt itself to 
the election laws and stretching feelers in all 
cities and rural communities, the Social De- 
mocracy built up the unique structure of the 
political organization of the German prole- 
tariat with its many-branched bureaucratic 
hierarchy, its one million dues-paying mem- 
bers, its four million voters, ninety-one daily 



SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM 193 

papers and sixty-five Party printing presses. 
This whole many-sided activity, of immeasur- 
able historical importance, was permeated 
through and through with the spirit of possi- 
bilism. 

In forty-five years history did not offer the 
German proletariat a single opportunity to re- 
move an obstacle by a stormy attack, or to cap- 
ture any hostile position in a revolutionary ad- 
vance. As a result of the mutual relation of so- 
cial forces, it was forced to avoid obstacles or 
adapt itself to them. In this, Marxism as a the- 
ory was a valuable tool for political guidance, 
but it could not change the opportunist charac- 
ter of the class movement, which in essence was 
at that time alike in England, France and Ger- 
many. For all the undisputed superiority of 
the German organization, the tactics of the 
unions were very much the same in Berlin and 
London. Their chief achievement was the sys- 
tem of tariff treaties. In the political field the 



194 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

difference was much greater and deeper. 
While the English proletariat were marching 
under the banner of Liberalism, the German 
workers formed an independent party with a 
Socialist platform. Yet this difference does not 
go nearly as deep in politics as it does in ideo- 
logic forms, and the forms of organization. 

Through the pressure that English labor ex- 
erted on the Liberal Party it achieved certain 
limited political victories, the extension of suf- 
frage, freedom to unionize, and social legisla- 
tion. The same was preserved or improved by 
the German proletariat through its independ- 
ent party, which it was obliged to form because 
of the speedy capitulation of German liberal- 
ism. And yet this party, while in principle 
fighting the fight for political power, was com- 
pelled in actual practice to adapt itself to the 
ruling power, to protect the labor movement 
against the blows of this power, and to achieve 
a few reforms. In other words : on account of 



SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM 195 

the difference in historical traditions and politi- 
cal conditions, the English proletariat adapted 
itself to the capitalist state through the me- 
dium of the Liberal Party; while the German 
proletariat was forced to form a party of its 
own to achieve the very same political ends. 
And the political struggle of the German pro- 
letariat in this entire period had the same op- 
portunist character limited by historical con- 
ditions as did that of the English proletariat. 

The similarity of these two phenomena so 
different in their forms comes out most clearly 
in the final results at the close of the period. 
The English proletariat in the struggle to meet 
its daily issues was forced to form an inde- 
pendent party of its own, without, however, 
breaking with its liberal traditions; and the 
party of the German proletariat, when the 
War forced upon it the necessity of a decisive 
choice, gave an answer in the spirit of the na- 



196 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOBLD PEACE 

tional-liberal traditions of the English labor 
party. 

Marxism, of course, was not merely some- 
thing accidental or insignificant in the German 
labor movement. Yet there would be no basis 
for deducing the social-revolutionary character 
of the Party from its official Marxist ideology. 

Ideology is an important, but not a decisive 
factor in politics. Its role is that of waiting on 
politics. That deep-seated contradiction, 
which was inherent in the awakening revolu- 
tionary class on account of its relation to the 
feudal-reactionary state, demanded an irrec- 
oncilable ideology which would bring the whole 
movement under the banner of social revolu- 
tionary aims. Since historical conditions 
forced opportunist tactics, the irreconcilability 
of the proletarian class found expression in the 
revolutionary formulas of Marxism. Theoreti- 
cally, Marxism reconciled with perfect success 
the contradiction between reform and revolu- 



SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM 197 

tion. Yet the process of historical develop- 
ment is something far more involved than 
theorizing in the realm of pure thought. The 
fact that the class which was revolutionary in 
its tendencies was forced for several decades 
to adapt itself to the monarchical police state, 
based on the tremendous capitalistic develop- 
ment of the country, in the course of which 
adaptation an organization of a million mem- 
bers was built up and a labor bureaucracy 
which led the entire movement was educated — 
this fact does not cease to exist and does not 
lose its weighty significance because Marxism 
anticipated the revolutionary character of the 
future movement. Only the most naive ide- 
ology could give the same place to this forecast 
that it does to the political actualities of the 
German labor movement. 

The German Revisionists were influenced in 
their conduct by the contradiction between the 
reform practice of the Party and its revolution- 



198 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

ary theories. They did not understand that 
this contradiction is conditioned by temporary, 
even if long-lasting circumstances and that it 
can only be overcome by further social develop- 
ment. To them it was a logical contradiction. 
The mistake of the Revisionists was not that 
they confirmed the reformistic character of the 
Party's tactics in the past, but that they wanted 
to perpetuate reformism theoretically and 
make it the only method of the proletarian class 
struggle. Thus, the Revisionists failed to take 
into account the objective tendencies of capi- 
talistic development, which by deepening class 
distinctions must lead to the social revolution 
as the one way to the emancipation of the pro- 
letariat. Marxism emerged from this theoreti- 
cal dispute as the victor all along the line. But 
revisionism, although defeated on the field of 
theory, continued to live, drawing sustenance 
from the actual conduct and the psychology of 
the whole movement. The critical refutation 



SOCIALIST OPPOETUNISM 199 

of revisionism as a theory by no means signified 
its defeat tactically and psychologically. The 
parliamentarians, the unionists, the comrades 
continued to live and to work in the atmosphere 
of general opportunism, of practical specializ- 
ing and of nationalistic narrowness. Reform- 
ism made its impress even upon the mind of 
August Bebel, the greatest representative of 
this period. 

The spirit of opportunism must have taken 
a particularly strong hold on the generation 
that came into the party in the eighties, in the 
time of Bismarck's anti- Socialist laws and of 
oppressive reaction all over Europe. Lacking 
the apostolic zeal of the generation that was 
connected with the First International, hin- 
dered in its first steps by the power of victori- 
ous imperialism, forced to adapt itself to the 
traps and snares of the anti- Socialist laws, this 
generation grew up in the spirit of moderation 
and constitutional distrust of revolution. They 



200 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

are now men of fifty to sixty years old, and 
they are the very ones who are now at the head 
of the unions and the political organizations. 
Reformism is their political psychology, if not 
also their doctrine. The gradual growing into 
Socialism — that is the basis of Revisionism — 
proved to be the most miserable Utopian dream 
in face of the facts of capitalistic development. 
But the gradual political growth of the Social 
Democracy into the mechanism of the national 
state has turned out to be a tragic actuality — 
for the entire race. 

The Russian Revolution was the first great 
event to bring a fresh whiff into the stale at- 
mosphere of Europe in the thirty-five years 
since the Paris Commune. The rapid develop- 
ment of the Russian working class and the un- 
expected strength of their concentrated revo- 
lutionary activity made a great impression on 
the entire civilized world and gave an impetus 
everywhere to the sharpening of political dif- 



SOCIALIST OPPORTUNISM 201 

ferences. In England the Russian Revolution 
hastened the formation of an independent labor 
party. In Austria, thanks to special circum- 
stances, it led to universal manhood suffrage. 
In France the echo of the Russian Revolution 
took the form of Syndicalism, which gave ex- 
pression, in inadequate practical and theoretical 
form, to the awakened revolutionary tenden- 
cies of the French proletariat. And in Ger- 
many the influence of the Russian Revolution 
showed itself in the strengthening of the young 
Left wing of the Party, in the rapprochement 
of the leading Center to it, and in the isolation 
of Revisionism. The question of the Prussian 
franchise, this key to the political position of 
Junkerdom, took on a keener edge. And the 
Party adopted in principle the revolutionary 
method of the general strike. But all this ex- 
ternal shaping up proved inadequate to shove 
the Party on to the road of the political of- 



202 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

fensive. In accordance with the Party tradi- 
tion, the turn toward radicalism found expres- 
sion in discussions and the adoption of resolu- 
tions. That was as far as it ever went. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE DECLINE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT 

Six or seven years ago a political ebb-tide 
everywhere followed upon the revolutionary 
flood-tide. In Russia the counter-revolution 
triumphed and began a period of decay for the 
Russian proletariat both in politics and in the 
strength of their own organizations. In Aus- 
tria the thread of achievements started by the 
working class broke off, social insurance legis- 
lation rotted in the government offices, nation- 
alist conflicts began again with renewed vigor 
in the arena of universal manhood suffrage, 
weakening and dividing the Social Democracy. 
In England, the Labor Party, after separating 
from the Liberal Party, entered into the closest 
association with it again. In France the Syn- 
dicalists passed over to reformist positions. 

203 



204 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

Gustav Herve changed to the opposite of him- 
self in the shortest time. And in the German 
Social Democracy the Revisionists lifted their 
heads, encouraged by history's having given 
them such a revenge. The South Germans 
perpetrated their demonstrative vote for the 
budget. The Marxists were compelled to 
change from offensive to defensive tactics. The 
efforts of the Left wing to draw the Party 
into a more active policy were unsuccessful. 
The dominating Center swung more and more 
towards the Right, isolating the radicals. Con- 
servatism, recovering from the blows it re- 
ceived in 1905, triumphed all along the line. 

In default of revolutionary activity as well 
as the possibility for reformist work, the Party 
spent its entire energy on building up the or- 
ganization, on gaining new members for the 
unions and for the Party, on starting new pa- 
pers and getting new subscribers. Condemned 
for decades to a policy of opportunist waiting, 



THE DECLINE OF SPIBIT 205 

the Party took up the cult of organization as 
an end in itself. Never was the spirit of inertia 
produced by mere routine work so strong in the 
German Social Democracy as in the years im- 
mediately preceding the great catastrophe. 
And there can be no doubt that the question of 
the preservation of the organizations, treas- 
uries, People's Houses and printing presses 
played a mighty important part in the position 
taken by the fraction in the Reichstag towards 
the War. "Had we done anything else we 
would have brought ruin upon our organization 
and our presses" was the first argument I heard 
from a leading German comrade. 

And how characteristic it is of the oppor- 
tunistic psychology induced by mere organiza- 
tion work, that out of ninety-one Social Demo- 
cratic papers not one found it possible to pro- 
test against the violation of Belgium. Not one! 
After the repeal of the anti- Socialist laws, the 
Party hesitated long before starting its own 



206 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

printing presses, lest these might be confiscated 
by the government in the event of great hap- 
penings. And now that it has its own presses, 
the Party hierarchy fears every decisive step 
so as not to afford opportunity for confiscation. 

Most eloquent of all is the incident of the 
Vorwarts which begged for permission to con- 
tinue to exist — on the basis of a new pro- 
gramme indefinitely suspending the class con- 
flict. Every friend of the German Social De- 
mocracy had a sense of profound pain when he 
received his issue of the central organ with its 
humiliating "By Order of Ao-my Headquar- 
ters." Had the Vorwarts remained under in- 
terdiction, that would have been an important 
political fact to which the Party later could 
have referred with pride. At any rate that 
would have been far more honorable than to 
continue to exist with the imprint of the gen- 
eral's boots on its forehead. 

But higher than all considerations of policy 



THE DECLINE OF SPIRIT 207 

and the dignity of the Party stood considera- 
tions of membership, printing presses, organ- 
ization. And so the Vorwarts now lives as two- 
paged evidence of the unlimited brutality of 
Junkerdom in Berlin and in Louvain, and of 
the unlimited opportunism of the German So- 
cial Democracy. 

The Right wing stood more by its principles, 
which resulted from political considerations. 
Wolfgang Heine crassly formulated these 
principles of German Reformism in an absurd 
discussion as to whether the Social Democrats 
should leave the hall of the Reichstag when the 
members rose to cheer the Emperor's name, or 
whether they should merely keep their seats. 
"The creation of a republic in the German Em- 
pire is now and for some time to come out of 
the range of all possibility, so that it is not 
really a matter for our present policy." The 
practical results still not yet achieved may be 
reached, but only through co-operation with 



208 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

the liberal bourgeoisie. "For that reason, not 
because I am a stickler for form, I have 
called attention to the fact that parliamentary 
co-operation will be rendered difficult by dem- 
onstrations that needlessly hurt the feelings 
of the majority of the House." 

But if a simple infringement of monarchical 
etiquette was enough to destroy the hope of 
reformist co-operation with the liberal middle 
class, then certainly the break with the bour- 
geois "nation" in the moment of national "dan- 
ger" would have hindered, for years to come, 
not only all desired reforms, but also all re- 
formist desires. That attitude that was dic- 
tated to the routinists of the Party center by 
sheer anxiety over the preservation of the or- 
ganization was supplemented among the Re- 
visionists by political considerations. Their 
standpoint proved in every respect to be more 
comprehensive and won the victory all over. 
The entire Party press is now industriously ac- 



THE DECLINE OF SPIRIT 209 

claiming what it once heaped scorn upon, that 
the present patriotic attitude of the working 
class will win for them, after the war, the good 
will of the possessing classes for bringing about 
reforms. 

Therefore, the German Social Democracy- 
did not feel itself, under the stress of these 
great events, a revolutionary power with 
tasks far exceeding the question of widening 
the state's boundaries, a power that does not 
lose itself for an instant in the nationalistic 
whirl, but calmly awaits the favorable moment 
for joining with the other branches of the In- 
ternational in a purposeful interference in the 
course of events. ISTo, instead of that the Ger- 
man Social Democracy felt itself to be a sort of 
cumbersome train threatened by hostile cav- 
alry. For that reason it subordinated the en- 
tire future of the International to the quite 
extraneous question of the defense of the fron- 
tiers of the class state — because it felt itself 



210 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

first and foremost to be a conservative state 
within the state. 

"Look at Belgium!" cries the Vorwarts to 
encourage the workmen-soldiers. The Peo- 
ple's Houses there have been changed into 
army hospitals, the newspapers suppressed, all 
Party life crushed out.* And therefore hold 
out until the end, "until the decisive victory is 
ours." In other words, keep on destroying, let 
the work of your own hands be a terrifying les- 
son to you. "Look at Belgium," and out of 
this terror draw courage for renewed destruc- 
tion. 

What has just been said refers not to the 
German Social Democracy alone, but also to 
all the older branches of the International that 
have lived through the history of the last half 
century. 

* A sentimental correspondent of the Vorwarts writes that he 
was looking for Belgian comrades in the Maison du Peuple and 
found a German army hospital there. And what did the Vor- 
warts correspondent want of his Belgian comrades? "To win 
them to the cause of the German people — just when Brussels 
itself had been won 'for the cause of the German people !' " 



CHAPTER X 

WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM 

There is one factor in the collapse of the 
Second International that is still unclarified. 
It dwells at the heart of all the events that the 
Party has passed through. 

The dependence of the proletarian class 
movement, particularly in its economic con- 
flicts, upon the scope and the successes of the 
imperialistic policy of the state is a question 
which, as far as I know, has never been dis- 
cussed in the Socialist press. Nor can I at- 
tempt to solve it in the short space of this work. 
So what I shall say on this point will neces- 
sarily be in the nature of a brief review. 

The proletariat is deeply interested in the 

development of the forces of production. The 

national state created in Europe by the revolu- 

211 



212 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

tions and wars of the years 1789 to 1870 was 
the basic type of the economic evolution of the 
past period. The proletariat contributed by 
its entire conscious policy to the development 
of the forces of production on a national foun- 
dation. It supported the bourgeoisie in its 
conflicts with alien enemies for national libera- 
tion; also in its conflicts with the monarchy, 
with feudalism and the church for political de- 
mocracy. And in the measure in which the 
bourgeois turned to "law and order," that is, 
became reactionary, the proletariat assumed 
the historical task it left uncompleted. In 
championing a policy of peace, culture and de- 
mocracy, as against the bourgeoisie, it contrib- 
uted to the enlargement of the national mar- 
ket, and so gave an impetus to the development 
of the forces of production. 

The proletariat had an equal economic inter- 
est in the democratizing and the cultural prog- 
ress of all other countries in their relation of 



WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM 213 

buyer or seller to its own country. In this re- 
sided the most important guarantee for the 
international solidarity of the proletariat both 
in so far as final aims and daily policies are con- 
cerned. The struggle against the remnants of 
feudal barbarism, against the boundless de- 
mands of militarism, against agrarian duties 
and indirect taxes was the main object of work- 
ing-class politics and served, directly and indi- 
rectly, to help develop the forces of production. 
That is the very reason why the great majority 
of organized labor joined political forces with 
the Social Democracy. Every hindrance to 
the development of the forces of production 
touches the trade unions most closely. 

As capitalism passed from a national to an 
international-imperialistic ground, national 
production, and with it the economic struggle 
of the proletariat, came into direct dependence 
on those conditions of the world-market which 
are secured by dreadnaughts and cannon. In 



214 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

other words, in contradiction of the fundamen- 
tal interests of the proletariat taken in their 
wide historic extent, the immediate trade inter- 
ests of various strata of the proletariat proved 
to have a direct dependence upon the successes 
or the failures of the foreign policies of the gov- 
ernments. 

England long before the other countries 
placed her capitalistic development on the basis 
of predatory imperialism, and she interested 
the upper strata of the proletariat in her world 
dominion. In championing its own class inter- 
ests, the English proletariat limited itself to 
exercising pressure on the bourgeois parties 
which granted it a share in the capitalistic ex- 
ploitation of other countries. It did not begin 
an independent policy until England began to 
lose her position in the world market, pushed 
aside, among others, by her main rival, Ger- 
many. 

But with Germany's growth to industrial 



WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM 215 

world-importance, grew the dependence of 
broad strata of the German proletariat on Ger- 
man imperialism, not materially alone but also 
ideally. The Vorwarts wrote on August 11th 
that the German workingmen, "counted among 
the politically intelligent, to, whom we have 
preached the dangers of imperialism for years 
( although with very little success, we must con- 
fess)" scold at Italian neutrality like the ex- 
tremest chauvinists. But that did not prevent 
the Vorwarts from feeding the German work- 
ingmen on "national" and "democratic" argu- 
ments in justification of the bloody work of 
imperialism. ( Some writers' backbones are as 
flexible as their pens.) 

However, all this does not alter facts. When 
the decisive moment came, there seemed to be 
no irreconcilable enmity to imperialistic policies 
in the consciousness of the German working- 
men. On the contrary, they seemed to listen 
readily to imperialist whisperings veiled in na- 



216 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

tional and democratic phraseology. This is not 
the first time that Socialistic imperialism re- 
veals itself in the German Social Democracy. 
Suffice it to recall the fact that at the Interna- 
tional Congress in Stuttgart it was the major- 
ity of the German delegates, notably the trade 
unionists, who voted against the Marxist reso- 
lution on the colonial policy. The occurrence 
made a sensation at the time, but its true sig- 
nificance comes out more clearly in the light of 
present events. Just now the trade union press 
is linking the cause of the German working 
class to the work of the Hohenzollern army 
with more consciousness and matter-of-f actness 
than do the political organs. 

As long as capitalism remained on a national 
basis, the proletariat could not refrain from co- 
operation in democratizing the political rela- 
tions and in developing the forces of produc- 
tion through its parliamentary, communal and 
other activities. The attempts of the anarchists 



WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM 217 

to set up a formal revolutionary agitation in 
opposition to the political rights of the Social 
Democracy condemned them to isolation and 
gradual extinction. But when the capitalist 
states overstep their national form to become 
imperialistic world powers, the proletariat can- 
not oppose this new imperialism. And the rea- 
son is the so-called minimal programme which 
fashioned its policy upon the framework of the 
national state. When its main concern is for 
tariff treaties and social legislation, the prole- 
tariat is incapable of expending the same en- 
ergy in fighting imperialism that it did in fight- 
ing feudalism. By applying its old methods 
of the class struggle — the constant adaptation 
to the movements of the markets — to the 
changed conditions produced by imperialism, it 
itself falls into material and ideological de- 
pendence on imperialism. 

The only way the proletariat can pit its revo- 
lutionary force against imperialism is under the 



218 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

banner of Socialism. The working class is 
powerless against imperialism as long as its 
great organizations stand by their old oppor- 
tunist tactics. The working class will be all- 
powerful against imperialism when it takes to 
the battlefield of Social Revolution. 

The methods of national parliamentary op- 
position not only fail to produce objective re- 
sults, but the laboring masses lose all interest in 
them because they find that their earnings and 
their very existence are not affected by what 
is done in parliament. Behind the backs of 
the parliamentarians imperialism wins its suc- 
cesses in the world market. 

The methods of national-parliamentary op- 
position not only fail to produce practical re- 
sults, but also cease to make an appeal to the 
laboring masses, because the workers find that, 
behind the backs of the parliamentarians, im- 
perialism, by armed force, reduces the wages 
and the very lives of the workers to ever greater 



WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM 219 

dependence on its successes in the world mar- 
ket. 

It was clear to every thinking Socialist that 
the only way the proletariat could be made to 
pass from opportunism to Revolution was not 
by agitation, but by a historical upheaval. But 
no one foresaw that history would preface this 
inevitable change of tactics by such a catastro- 
phal collapse of the International. History 
works with titanic relentlessness. What is the 
Rheims Cathedral to History? And what a 
few hundred or thousand political reputations ? 
And what the life or death of hundreds of 
thousands or of millions? 

The proletariat has remained too long in the 
preparatory school, much longer than its great 
pioneer fighters thought it would. History 
took her broom in hand, swept the Interna- 
tional of the epigone apart in all directions 
and led the slow-moving millions into the field 



220 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

where their last illusions are being washed away 
in blood. A terrible experiment! On its re- 
sult perhaps hangs the fate of European civil- 
ization. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH 

At the close of the last century a heated con- 
troversy arose in Germany over the question, 
What effect does the industrialization of 
a country produce upon its military power? 
The reactionary agrarian politicians and 
writers, like Sehring, Karl Ballod, Georg Han- 
sen and others, argued that the rapid increase 
of the city populations at the expense of the 
rural districts positively undermined the foun- 
dation of the Empire's military power, and 
they of course drew from it their patriotic in- 
ferences in the spirit of agrarian protectionism. 
On the other hand Lujo Brentano and his 
school championed an exactly opposite point of 
view. They pointed out that economic indus- 
trialism not only opened up new financial and 

221 



222 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

technical resources, but also developed in the 
proletariat the vital force capable of making ef- 
fective use of all the new means of defense and 
attack. He quotes authoritative opinions to 
show that even in the earlier experiences of 
1870-71 "the regiments from the preponder- 
antly industrial district of Westphalia were 
among the very best." And he explains this 
fact quite correctly by the far greater ability 
of the industrial worker to find his bearings in 
new conditions and to adjust himself to them. 
Now which side is right? The present War 
proves that Germany, which has made the 
greatest progress along capitalistic lines, was 
able to develop the highest military power. 
And likewise in regard to all the countries 
drawn into it the War proves what colossal and 
yet competent energy the working class de- 
velops in its warlike activities. It is not the 
passive horde-like heroism of the peasant 
masses, welded together by fatalistic submis- 



THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH 223 

siveness and religious superstition. It is the in- 
dividualized spirit of sacrifice, born of inner im- 
pulse, ranging itself under the banner of the 
Idea. 

But the Idea under whose banner the armed 
proletariat now stands, is the Idea of war- 
crafty nationalism, the deadly enemy of the 
true interests of the workers. The ruling class 
showed themselves strong enough to force their 
Idea upon the proletariat, and the proletariat, 
in the consciousness of what they were doing, 
put their intelligence, their enthusiasm and 
their courage at the service of their class-foes. 
In this fact is sealed the terrible defeat of So- 
cialism. But it also opens up all possibilities 
for a final victory of Socialism. There can be 
no doubt that a class which is capable of dis- 
playing such steadfastness and self-sacrifice in 
a war it considers a "just" one, will be still 
more capable of developing these qualities when 



224 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

the march of events will give it tasks really 
worthy of the historical mission of this class. 

The epoch of the awakening, the enlighten- 
ment and the organization of the working-class 
revealed that it has tremendous resources of 
revolutionary energy which found no ade- 
quate employment in the daily struggle. The 
Social Democracy summoned the upper strata 
of the proletariat into the field, but it also 
checked their revolutionary energy by adopt- 
ing the tactics it was obliged to adopt, the tac- 
tics of waiting, the strategy of letting your op- 
ponent exhaust himself. The character of this 
period was so dull and reactionary that it did 
not allow the Social Democracy the opportu- 
nity to give the proletariat tasks that would 
have engaged their whole spirit of sacrifice. 

Imperialism is now giving them such tasks. 
And imperialism attained its object by pushing 
the proletariat into a position of "national de- 
fense," which, to the workers, meant the defense 



THE KEVOLUTIOJSTABY EPOCH 225 

of all their hands had created, not only the im- 
mense wealth of the nation, but also their own 
class-organizations, their treasuries, their press, 
in short, everything they had unwearingly, 
painfully struggled for and attained in the 
course of several decades. Imperialism vio- 
lently threw society off its balance, destroyed 
the sluice-gates built by the Social Democracy 
to regulate the current of proletarian revolu- 
tionary energy, and guided this current into its 
own bed. 

But this terrific historical experiment, which 
at one blow broke the back of the Socialist In- 
ternational, carries a deadly danger for bour- 
geois society itself. The hammer is wrenched 
out of the worker's hand and a gun put into 
his hand instead. And the worker, who has 
been tied down by the machinery of the capital- 
ist system, is suddenly torn from his usual set- 
ting and taught to place the aims of society 
above happiness at home and even life itself. 



226 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

With the weapon in his hand that he himself 
has forged, the worker is put in a position 
where the political destiny of the state is di- 
rectly dependent upon him. Those who ex- 
ploited and scorned him in normal times, flat- 
ter him now and toady to him. At the same 
time he comes into intimate contact with the 
cannon, which Lassalle calls one of the most 
important ingredients of all constitutions. He 
crosses the border, takes part in forceful requi- 
sitions, and helps in the passing of cities 
from one party to another. Changes are taking 
place such as the present generation has never 
before seen. 

Even though the vanguard of the working- 
class knew in theory that Might is the mother 
of Right, still their political thinking was com- 
pletely permeated by the spirit of opportunism, 
of adaptation to bourgeois legalism. Now 
they are learning from the teachings of facts 
to despise this legalism and tear it down. Now 



THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH 227 

dynamic forces are replacing the static 
forces in their psychology. The great guns are 
hammering into their heads the idea that if it 
is impossible to get around an obstacle, it is 
possible to destroy it. Almost the entire adult 
male population is going through this school 
of war, so terrible in its realism, a school which 
is forming a new human type. Iron necessity 
is now shaking its fist at all the rules of bour- 
geois society, at its laws, its morality, its re- 
ligion. "Necessity knows no law," said the 
German Chancellor on August 4th. Monarchs 
walk about in public places calling each other 
liars in the language of market-women; gov- 
ernments repudiate their solemnly acknowl- 
edged obligations, and the national church ties 
its God to the national cannon like a criminal 
condemned to hard labor. Is it not clear that 
all these circumstances must bring about a pro- 
found change in the mental attitude of the 
working-class, curing them radically of the 



228 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

hypnosis of legality in which a period of politi- 
cal stagnation expresses itself? 

The possessing classes, to their consterna- 
tion, will soon have to recognize this change. A 
working-class that has been through the school 
of war will feel the need of using the language 
of force as soon as the first serious obstacle 
faces them within their own country. "Neces- 
sity knows no law" the workers will cry when 
the attempt is made to hold them back at the 
command of bourgeois law. And poverty, the 
terrible poverty that prevails during this war 
and will continue after its close, will be of a 
sort to force the masses to violate many a bour- 
geois law. The general economic exhaustion 
in Europe will affect the proletariat most im- 
mediately and most severely. The state's ma- 
terial resources will be depleted by the war, 
and the possibility of satisfying the demands 
of the working-masses will be very limited. 
This must lead to profound political conflicts, 



THE KEVOLUTIONAKY EPOCH 229 

which, ever-widening and deepening, may take 
on the character of a social revolution, the 
course and outcome of which no one, of course, 
can now foresee. 

On the other hand, the War with its armies 
of millions, and its hellish weapons of destruc- 
tion can exhaust not only society's resources 
but also the moral forces of the proletariat. If 
it does not meet inner resistance, this War may 
last for several years more, with changing for- 
tunes on both sides, until the chief belligerents 
are completely exhausted. But then the whole 
fighting energy of the international proletariat, 
brought to the surface by the bloody conspir- 
acy of imperialism, will be completely con- 
sumed in the horrible work of mutual annihila- 
tion. The outcome would be that our entire 
civilization would be set back by many decades. 
A peace resulting not from the will of the 
awakened peoples but from the mutual exhaus- 
tion of the belligerents, would be like the peace 



230 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

with which the Balkan War was concluded; it 
would be a Bucharest Peace extended to the 
whole of Europe. 

Such a peace would seek to patch up anew 
the contradictions, antagonisms and deficiencies 
that have led to the present War. And with 
many other things, the Socialist work of two 
generations would vanish in a sea of blood with- 
out leaving a trace behind. 

Which of the two prospects is the more prob- 
able ? This cannot possibly be theoretically de- 
termined in advance. The issue depends en- 
tirely upon the activity of the vital forces of 
society — above all upon the revolutionary So- 
cial Democracy. 

"Immediate cessation of the War 33 is the 
watchword under which the Social Democracy 
can reassemble its scattered ranks, both within 
the national parties, and in the whole Interna- 
tional. The proletariat cannot make its will 
to peace dependent upon the strategic consid- 



THE REVOLUTIONABY EPOCH 231 

erations of the general staffs. On the contrary, 
it must oppose its desire for peace to these mili- 
tary considerations. What the warring gov- 
ernments call a struggle for national self-pres- 
ervation is in reality a mutual national anni- 
hilation. Real national self-defense now con- 
sists in the struggle for peace. 

Such a struggle for peace means for us not 
only a fight to save humanity's material and 
cultural possessions from further insane de- 
struction. It is for us primarily a fight to pre- 
serve the revolutionary energy of the prole- 
tariat. 

To assemble the ranks of the proletariat in 
a fight for peace means again to place the 
forces of revolutionary Socialism against rag- 
ing, tearing imperialism on the whole front. 

The conditions upon which peace should be 
concluded — the peace of the peoples them- 
selves, and not the reconciliation of the diplo- 



232 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

mats — must be the same for the whole Inter- 
national. 

NO CONTRIBUTIONS. 
THE RIGHT OF EVERY NATION 
TO SELF-DETERMINATION. 
THE UNITED STATES OF EU- 
ROPE—WITHOUT MONARCHIES, 
WITHOUT STANDING ARMIES, 
WITHOUT RULING FEUDAL 
CASTES, WITHOUT SECRET DI- 
PLOMACY. 

The peace agitation, which must be con- 
ducted simultaneously with all the means now 
at the disposal of the Social Democracy as 
well as those which, with a good will, it could 
acquire, will not only tear the workers out of 
their nationalistic hypnosis; it will also do the 
saving work of inner purification in the pres- 
ent official parties of the proletariat. The na- 
tional Revisionists and the Socialist patriots in 



THE BEVOLUTIONABY EPOCH 233 

the Second International, who have been ex- 
ploiting the influence that Socialism has ac- 
quired over the working masses for national 
militaristic aims, must be thrust back into the 
camp of the enemies of the working class by 
uncompromising revolutionary agitation for 
peace. 

The revolutionary Social Democracy need 
not fear that it will be isolated, now less than 
ever. The War is making the most terrible 
agitation against itself. Every day that the 
War lasts will bring new masses of people to 
our banner, if it is an honest banner of peace 
and democracy. The surest way by which the 
Social Democracy can isolate the militaristic 
reaction in Europe and force it to take the of- 
fensive is by the slogan of Peace. 

******* 

We revolutionary Marxists have no cause 
for despair. The epoch into which we are now 
entering will be our epoch. Marxism is not de- 



234 BOLSHEVIKI AND WOELD PEACE 

feated. On the contrary: the roar of the can- 
non in every quarter of Europe heralds the 
theoretical victory of Marxism. What is left 
now of the hopes for a "peaceful" development, 
for a mitigation of capitalist class contrasts, 
for a regular systematic growth into Social- 
ism? 

The Reformists on principle, who hoped to 
solve the social question by the way of tariff 
treaties, consumers' leagues, and the parliamen- 
tary co-operation of the Social Democracy with 
the bourgeois parties, are now all resting their 
hopes on the victory of the "national" arms. 
They are expecting the possessing classes to 
show greater willingness to meet the needs of 
the proletariat because it has proved its pa- 
triotism. 

This expectation would be positively foolish 
if there were not hidden behind it another, far 
less "idealistic" hope — that a military victory 
would create for the bourgeoisie a broader im- 



THE REVOLUTIONAEY EPOCH 235 

perialistic field for enriching itself at the ex- 
pense of the bourgeoisie of other countries, and 
would enable it to share some of the booty with 
its own proletariat at the expense of the pro- 
letariat of other countries. Socialist reformism 
has actually turned into Socialist imperialism. 
We have witnessed with our own eyes the pa- 
thetic bankruptcy of the hopes of a peaceful 
growth of proletarian well-being. The Reform- 
ists, contrary to their own doctrine, were forced 
to resort to violence in order to find their way 
out of the political cul-de-sac — and not the vio- 
lence of the peoples against the ruling classes, 
but the military violence of the ruling classes 
against other nations. Since 1848 the Ger- 
man bourgeoisie has renounced revolutionary 
methods for solving its problems. They left it 
to the feudal class to solve their own bourgeois 
questions by the method of war. Social devel- 
opment confronted the proletariat with the 
problem of revolution. Evading revolution, 



236 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

the Reformists were forced to go through the 
same process of historical decline as the liberal 
bourgeoisie. The Reformists also left it to 
their ruling classes, that is the same feudal 
caste, to solve the proletarian problem by the 
method of war. But this ends the analogy. 

The creation of national states did really 
solve the bourgeois problem for a long period, 
and the long series of colonial wars coming 
after 1871 finished off the period by broaden- 
ing the arena of the development of the capi- 
talistic forces. The period of colonial wars car- 
ried on by the national states led to the present 
War of the national states — for colonies. After 
all the backward portions of the earth had been 
divided among the capitalist states, there was 
nothing left for these states except to grab the 
colonies from each other. 

"People ought not to talk," says George Ir- 
mer, "as though it were self-evident that the 
German Empire has come too late for rivalry 



THE EEVOLUTIONAKY EPOCH 237 

for world economy and world markets, that the 
world has already been divided. Has not the 
earth been divided over and over again in all 
epochs of history?" 

But a re- division of colonies among the capi- 
talist countries does not enlarge the foundation 
of capitalist development. One country's gain 
means another country's loss. Accordingly a 
temporary mitigation of class-conflicts in Ger- 
many could only be achieved by an extreme in- 
tensification of the class-struggle in France and 
in England, and vice versa. An additional fac- 
tor of decisive importance is the capitalist 
awakening in the colonies themselves, to which 
the present War must give a mighty impetus. 
Whatever the outcome of this War, the impe- 
rialistic basis for European capitalism will not 
be broadened, but narrowed. The War, there- 
fore, does not solve the labor question on an 
imperialistic basis, but, on the contrary, it in- 
tensifies it, putting this alternative to the capi- 



238 BOLSHEVIKI AND WORLD PEACE 

talist world: Permanent War or Revolution. 

If the War got beyond the control of the 
Second International, its immediate conse- 
quences will get beyond the control of the bour- 
geoisie of the entire world. We revolutionary 
Socialists did not want the War. But we do 
not fear it. We do not give in to despair over 
the fact that the War broke up the Interna- 
tional. History had already disposed of the 
International. 

The revolutionary epoch will create new 
forms of organization out of the inexhaustible 
resources of proletarian Socialism, new forms 
that will be equal to the greatness of the new 
tasks. To this work we will apply ourselves 
at once, amid the mad roaring of the machine- 
guns, the crashing of cathedrals, and the pa- 
triotic howling of the capitalist jackals. We 
will keep our clear minds amid this hellish death 
music, our undimmed vision. We feel our- 
selves to be the only creative force of the fu- 



THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH 239 

ture. Already there are many of us, more than 
it may seem. To-morrow there will be more of 
us than to-day. And the day after to-morrow, 
millions will rise up under our banner, millions 
who even now, sixty-seven years after the Com- 
munist Manifesto, have nothing to lose but 
their chains. 



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